The films of the French director Lucile Hadžihalilović (Innocence, Evolution) are seriously weird, and utterly serious about their weirdness. There are no Gilliam-style winks at the audience, more a sober, studious perversity which at times feels like a murky Mitteleuropean take on David Lynch.
Like her previous films, Earwig (adapted from the novel by Brian Catling) depicts a world that is insular and governed by baroque and sinister rituals involving children. In this case the child is Mia (Romane Hemelaers), a young girl who has to submit to the daily ordeal of having a set of dentures fitted which are made entirely of ice, while her melancholy guardian takes occasional calls from a stranger. Elsewhere, a waitress (Romola Garai) wounded in an attack by the girl’s guardian sinks into a disorientating laudanum haze.
Like Hadžihalilović’s earlier work, too, it is exquisitely crafted yet edged with cruelty. It is lit in a way that seems to emphasise the darkness (the colour palette favours a particularly unsavoury yellow). But Earwig, the director’s first English-language film, lacks the macabre logic of Evolution, or the precision of Innocence; the audience is left fumbling for meaning in the gloom.
