Evolution (2016)
Evolution
(2016)
Among the
many cultural transformations that came after WWII (ended 1945) was pressure on
parents to speak to their children more realistically about Sex and Reproduction.
Under this pressure, I don’t think many parents totally came to the plate as
well as they should’ve, but at least silly Myths like Storks Bring Babies
started to disappear. My mother trained as a Nurse towards the end and
immediately after the War and was influenced by the Writings of Dr. Benjamin
Spock’s landmark book was “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care” (1946);
she was blunt her children; she might not think we were old enough to learn
certain things yet so there were questions she wouldn’t answer, she would never
tell us the nonsense her mother told her. This obviously is all well and good,
but the Mysteries of these things were still overwhelming, perhaps made even
weirder because the Lies or Myths that needed to be unlearned later were at
least easy to process, while the Realities were kinda overwhelming to a child
that was only barely reaching their first decade on Earth.
This film is
about that confusing time, though it’s intended Audience is adult, and it would
be pretty weird if you even tried to show it to a kid. It’s Writer/Director Lucile
Hadžihalilović’s third feature and her much-admired second feature, “Innocence”
(2004, I haven’t seen it) explored the same challenging time from the POV of
young girls. This time, collaborating with co-Writers Alante Kavaite and Geoff
Cox, it’s about young boys, and she has fun toying with adult male Neuroses
regarding Female Power. It’s as much a Fairy Tale as the Stork Myth, but a Dark
Fairy Tale indeed. It took her more than a decade to create this third feature,
but Hadžihalilović is also known for her post-Production work on the films of
her husband, Gaspar Noé, the leading figure in the New French Extremity
movement, within this film certainly belongs.
One thing
that every review of this film stresses in the beauty of the Cinematography by Manuel
Dacosse, even before this film, he was multi-Award-Nominated-and-Winning Cinematographer,
almost all for hyper-stylish Horror films, and then he gathered more wins for
this movie. This was underlined to me because I watched this film streaming,
and initially followed the wrong link, not this SF,F&H movie, but an Educational
Documentary of the same name (from 2018). The Documentary had almost identical
opening images, ocean from a vantage point beneath the waves, dappling light,
and sweeping tracking shots celebrating the diversity coral reefs. Finally
finding the right movie, I saw the SF,F&H film had better shots, conveying
the beauty of the Real far more richly than the Educational Documentary. That’s
a big part of this film’s accomplishment; at its heart, it’s Body Horror, but
with a uniquely leisurely pace, taking its time to make the Fantastical seem Real.
The palette is mostly dark, but still rich, full of seaweed-greens,
brackish-greys, and azure blues. Hadzihalilovic, “We wanted to capture a kind
of abstraction through organic matter and movement.”
Another film
it should not be confused with is Director Ivan Reitman’s “Evolution” (2001), a
painfully mediocre rehash of Reitman’s earlier, and far better, “Ghostbusters”
(1984).
And there’s an
Author one should keep in mind watching this film, Howard Phillips Lovecraft
(HPL), who was a Master of evoking the Unknown as Scarier than the actual
Threat that the Unknown hides. Writer/Director
Hadžihalilović is far more Meditative in her Cosmic Horror than HPL but shares
the same unsettling sense that All One Knows Maybe a Lie, of Transgressive Biologies,
Un-Natural seeming Natures, and an obsession with the Ocean as the Birthplace
of all Life which Stubbornly Refuses to Reveal its Secrets. HPL has proven a
notoriously difficult Writer to adapt, the first attempt was “The Haunted
Palace” (1963, based on “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” (1927)) and didn’t
credit him, but attributed the source material to Edgar Allan Poe, and mimicked
Poe more than HPL. Much of what followed was terrible and/or failed to credit
the source material. The first really good HPL film was “ReAminator” (1985), a decidedly
weird example as it was Sexually Explicit Horror Comedy based on a story that
almost Puritan HPL called his worst effort (“Herbet West: Reanimator” (1922)).
Things improved after that but even today, HPL Pastiches like the “Alien” Franchise
(first film 1979) and “Into the Mouth of Madness” (1994) tend to be better than
most Direct Adaptations. “Evolution” belongs among the Pastiches, and may
represent a new trend as it shared with “Spring” (2014) a focus on slowing down
the narrative, making us wait for the Gore, and focusing on the glory of the Environment
before unleashing the Horrors into it. HPL’s Atmospheric Cosmic Horrors may be
better served in the Art House than in the Pulp Magazines that originally published
his work.
“Evolution”
is set on an idyllic, unnamed Island (shot on the Spanish Island of Lanzarote in
the Canary Islands). The first Character introduced is Nicolas (Max Brebant), plunging
down from the Ocean surface, reverie-ing in his Athleticism and the Natural Beauty,
but this is interrupted because he glances what he thinks is a Dead Boy
imbedded in the reefs, a red Starfish on the Corpe’s belly. Nicholas surfaces,
tells his mother (Julie-Marie Parmentier), but she is dismissive, insisting he’s
letting his imagination run away with itself. True, the Audience barely saw the
body (repeatedly, the Barely Seen is an important part of this film’s visual
vocabulary, contrasting with things we see with horrible Clarity) but her is
dismissiveness strikes the Audience wrong.
Other
things, shown but not stated, and certainly not explained, continue to
gradually add to the list of Wrongness. There are many boy children on the
island, but no young girls. There are no adult men, but many women. All the
women, though played by different Actresses, look remarkably similar, especially
how their blonde eyebrows make it seem they have no eyebrows at all, it’s an
Alien look, but subtle. Collectively, these women are blank-faced and seems to
move with unanimity. Nicolas looks healthy but is told he his sick and ordered
to eat disgusting black gruel and drink equally inky medicine.
Nicolas: “Why
am I sick?”
The
never-named mother: “Because at your age, your body is changing and weakening.”
We discover
clues to what’s going on almost entirely through Nicholas’ eyes, we may solve
some parts of the Mystery faster than he does, but since no one explains
anything to him honestly, we remain much in the dark even as the credits roll.
Critic Simon Abrams writes that it, “feels like a transmission from an alien
world, one where all the important narrative information you need is imparted
visually.”
The island
has no electricity, so any travel at night requires carrying a lantern, which
is a repeated, nicely evocative, image. One night Nicholas and his friend,
Victor (Mathieu Goldfeld), follow their mothers who have gone from the houses
without explanation. Victor gets scared and turns back, but Nicholas soldiers
on. What Nicholas discovers is a strange, ritualistic, lesbian, orgy by the Ocean,
involving something that came from the Ocean. There is full-frontal nudity
among the moaning, caressing, women and they apparently lack sexual organs
between their legs. Their bodies are laid out in a Starfish shape.
One-by-one, all
the boys are sent to a decrepit-looking Hospital staffed by the strange
look-alike women as Nurses, but no one seems to be a Doctor. There we see,
without any explanation in the sparce dialogue, a Reproductive Process that shares
its closest Real-World equivalent with the Cuckoo Catfish reliance on Interspecific
Brood Parasitism, but more similar still to Author AE van Vogt’s story “Discord
in Scarlet” (1939, included in the fix-up novel “Voyage of the Space Beagle” (1950))
and the film “Alien” which borrowed more heavily from van Vogt than HPL. As the
bizarre Reproductive Process here is dependent on Surgical Invention, one could
conclude that the women are not really from Planet Earth even though their
living conditions are Primitive. Another detail is important here, Nicholas
doodles sketches of what he observes, among them is an automobile, something as
lacking from the island and adult men. Does he remember a life before the
island? Is he a Kidnap Victim?
When Nicolas
is sent to the Hospital, he finds a surprising connection with one of the
women, a Nurse (Roxane Duran), who stands out from the rest because of her
striking red hair. Throughout the film, most colors are muted, but some are
exaggerated, red most of all. Not only the Nurse’s hair, but the many Starfish,
and Nicholas’ swimming trunks which, of course, cover his Sexual Organs.
In their
first scene together, the Nurse offers to shower with Nicolas, but he refuses, “I
can do it myself.” She does undress him though, and Nicolas’ sketchbook falls
out of his pocket. He rushes to retrieve it, but the Nurse demands that he show
it to her. He pauses before he surrenders it. This scene is shot with a
stationary camera far enough away that we can see Nicholas head-to-foot. His
body language speaks more than the words he avoids saying. He knows everything
is Wrong, and he knows he’s Powerless to stop anything. The sketch book is full
of pictures Nicolas knows his mother doesn’t approve of, so he expects
punishment. But then the Nurse returns it to him with a slight smile, and their
bond is secured. (This was young Actor Brebant’s first and, to-date, only role,
he’s exceptionally good.)
The
developing Relationship between the two is like much of the rest of the film:
Almost wordless and disturbing, but in this case, also tender. The Nurse is an
adult, Nicholas is a child, they don’t have Sex (can these women even have
sex?) but the Sexual component is not an under-current, but a powerful current
in-of-itself. By that point, Nicholas is already on a precipice, everything he knows
is a Lie, he knows his mother is likely not his mother, and once he was sent to
the Hospital, she disappears, so the Nurse is the only person he can cling to.
The Nurse
assists in his escape, but only after he Survives what the women want from him
(it seems most boys don’t) and then she abandons him as his cold not-mother did.
Only with the abandonment do we learn her name when Nicolas cries out, “Stella!”
She is the only woman whose name we learn.
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