Wild Innocence (2001) User Reviews (2)

Wild Innocence - Movie Ruins Everything

[lasttimeisaw · 6/10 · 13 April 2007]

A black-white film about a young director who made his new movie against drug-addiction but ironically the only person interested in his movie was a rich drug dealer and he also had to transfer drugs for the dealer to get the money for the film.

Obviously the story sounds pretty funny but this film just does not pay too much attention to make it more intriguing, instead the plot is a little bit loose, it also involved the relationship between the young director and his newly-found leading actress of his film.

Reality sometimes can destroy every beautiful dream, this is a cruel truth no one could ever deny. And director is an emotional job, sensitive and full of unknowns, every director has to give up his original intention to fulfill his films. It's a world of compromise, no one can avoid it.

In this film, someone will quest the value of the director's work, the different world between acting and real life. Wild innocence means we should all keep something we don't intend to change and keep the uniqueness which distinguishes us from other individuals, so should movies.

The film shooting scenes in this movie are well done, I love the feeling of living in a dream which I can not be aware of, I do not mean the illusion caused by drugs, it's a more natural way to touch the inside.

Cynical and self-consciously clever

[MOscarbradley · 4/10 · 29 June 2017]

A young film director called Francois wants to make an anti-drugs movie but can't find a producer. When he does it turns out the guy's a heroin dealer. There's the makings of a very cynical black comedy here but Philippe Garrel doesn't really do comedy. What he does is irony so you may still find yourself sitting with something of a grin on your face for much of "Wild Innocence". As a film about a slightly egotistical, if still deeply sincere, young filmmaker there is almost an element of self-parody here and you feel this was a simple, easy film for Garrel to make.

It's visually gorgeous; the great Raoul Coutard photographed it luminously in black and white, (it was to be his last film), and there's a nice homage to the New Wave in the casting of Michel Subor as the drug-dealing producer. As the director Mehdi Belhaj Kacem is virtually never off the screen. I got the impression he wasn't really acting but simply 'standing in' for Garrel and it's interesting to note that this is only one of three times he has appeared on screen, while Jullia Faure as the young actress he casts in his film, "Wild Innocence", is pretty vacuous and just as Garrel doesn't do comedy, neither does he do thrills; the elements of a thriller are here but they just don't lead anywhere.

Ultimately Garrel gives in and makes his film the film Francois wants to make so that "Wild Innocence" becomes "Wild Innocence". This felt to me something of a cop-out just as the drugs Francois is forced to deal in finally infest his set; it's certainly something you can see coming. Perhaps, of course, this was meant to be the real black joke but I found it too predictable in a film that was self-consciously clever rather than likable or simply admirable and at over two hours it is definitely overlong.