[EVOLUTION
screens Saturday January 28th at 9:00 pm and Sunday January 29th at 6:30 pm at
the Cleveland Cinematheque.]
Review by Bob Ignizio
The French have a term: fantastique. It refers to a genre
where horror, science fiction, and fantasy intersect. A genre in which the outré
intrudes into an otherwise grounded, realistic narrative, generally without
explanation. That quite nicely describes the general tenor and tone of Lucile
Hadžihalilović's film EVOLUTION.
From the start, the viewer is simply dropped into the film's
bizarre world and asked to accept what they see at face value, just as the
characters do. What that entails is a small seaside village where a young boy,
Nicolas (Max Brebant), is shocked to discover the body of a boy with a red
starfish on his stomach while swimming in the ocean. His mother (Julie-Marie
Parmentier) tries to reassure Nicolas that there was no body, only the
starfish. But later, we see her bring the corpse to a mysterious cabal of women
at night.
