Critics reviews

A curious, Magritte-like work, marked by rigorous formal control and a narrative communicated in the language of dreams... Hadžihalilović's mise-en-scene is scrupulous; every prop has an inviting textural quality while at the same time projecting an air of mystery, and her use of negative space within the widescreen frame heightens the aura surrounding each object. The film proceeds less like a story than a series of paintings, but that's hardly a bad thing, given the visual sensibility at play.

This is the story of evolving consciousness that leads to the birth of skepticism — and, more specifically, a mistrusting of authorities that yields the desire to seek out a better world. In a twisted way befitting of such a gleefully fucked-up premise, it's the first feel good movie of a dark holiday season.

Spooky, tantalizing and beautifully shot and designed, "Evolution" creates a cinematic world that's utterly sui generis, but which also resonates with recognizable echoes of "The Lottery," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and, believe it or not, "The Little Mermaid." It's an impeccable, creepy and genuinely transporting movie.

Hadžihalilović manages to incorporate rather outré material without really disturbing her film's lucid-dream flow. Many of the film's immaculate images, as shot by Manuel Dacosse on the Canary Island of Lanzarote, suggest a strong correspondence between creatures aboveground and those underwater.

We can groove on the way Hadzihalilovic spends the film returning again and again to the same places, the same gross-out sights, from a slug-like beast to the green goop that passes for gruel. There's no catharsis, no eureka come end and — despite being sold in America as a midnight movie — no big climactic showdown. It's another deep stew in a world that seems familiar and alien. With Hadzihalilovic, it's a treat being lost.

It's a slippery film, but Hadzihalilovic directs it with surgical precision. The mood is taciturn and pensive, its imagery lucid, and some might talk of its beauty, but to call Evolution beautiful belies the disquieting feeling that suffuses its every articulate frame, its every measured beat sustained past the point of comfort.

To watch Hadzihalilovic's films is to be reminded that life itself is a deeply perplexing mystery... Evolution is the sort of film that doesn't require you to "turn off" your mind, but does ask that you surrender certain expectations. Most of all, this is a vision that no other director would have imbued with such a potent amalgam of tender and twisted. It's a pleasure to have her back.

On the most superficial level, there's a certain admirable audacity to the post-biology cosmos Hadzihalilovic conjures. And there's a stark, if queasy-making, boldness in her depictions of preadolescent bodies at their most vulnerable. Yet the hermeticism of Evolution can also seem like a dead end, as Hadzihalilovic returns to the same voluptuously grotesque images and scenarios over and over again.

Part science fiction, part coming of age tale, Hadzihalilovic's film is equally mesmerising and troubling. The seaside setting is both beautiful and sinister; lingering shots immersed under the ocean's surface reveal a luminous otherworld of vivid colours and pitch-black shadows. Hadzihalilovic's images are always evocative of texture.

If Evolution is defined by its fantastical exaggerations, they seem tilted towards science fiction, as Innocence was to suggestions of horror. The scientific apparatus of cross-gender pregnancy and birth has a Cronenberg look, while the two humanoid creatures to which Nicolas gives birth might owe their p/maternity to David Lynch.

Evolution is sensual cinema. Lucile Hadzihalilovic's second feature evokes the perspective of a child who cannot translate the strangeness of the world into words... The colours are almost too saturated to be real – and yet the settings evoke all that is glorious about the natural world. After 90 minutes of such heady beauty in colour and composition, anecdotal findings would suggest that people depart from the cinema in the altered state of a swoon.

Whether categorized as sci-fi allegory, surreal body horror, medical thriller, melancholy coming-of-age tale, or, in France, un film fantastique, Evolution is spellbinding from its magical first second to its enigmatic last.