Every once in a while, a movie unlike any other takes you by surprise. It’s the case for Earwig by Lucile Hadzihalilovic, bewitching tale and puzzling experience. A mute little girl undergoes strange dental experiments there from a strange man according to a story between dream and nightmare.
“I wanted to dive into the head of a man whose perception evokes a puzzle that he cannot put together”, confides the director ofInnocence and Evolution at 20 minutes. It is very freely inspired by a book by Brian Catling to plunge into a fascinating world around a little girl with ice teeth isolated in a sinister house.
Inside the Hero’s Head
“Promoting a male character fascinated me because it allowed me a very different approach from my previous films which were more centered on heroines”, confides the filmmaker. We soon do not know what to think of the relationship between this attentive guardian and the child for whom he is responsible. It is not the strange phone calls he receives from mysterious sponsors that will clarify the situation. The filmmaker manipulates reality with delight and a singular sense of poetry bordering on the fantastic. Fable on puberty or initiatory story? It doesn’t matter: the main thing is that the viewer gets carried away.
“Earwig’s story is not told in a linear fashion, insists Lucile Hadzihalilovic. But I wanted to put a lot of action and sometimes even a little gore in it. She flirts with experimental cinema for this atypical work which will seduce lovers of films moving away from the beaten track and formatted works.