Iris, six years old, arrives to the all-girls school in a coffin, just as the other children did before her. Receiving her are the other girls of her class, led by the eldest, Bianca, who is nearing her teen years. It's an eerie, unreal beginning, yet at the same time beautiful and warm.

"Why a coffin?" is but one of the many mysteries in the daily life of the girls. Where do older girls go every night, and why aren't they allowed to tell? What do the teachers do at nights behind closed doors? Despite being hard to understand and lacking in a traditional storyline, the film kept our attention admirably well. Each obscure scene holds suspense nicely, and surely, you think, answers will be waiting right around the corner.

There are many rules at the school. Strict bedtimes, times for waking up, for studying (biology, for instance) and for eating. Definitely no escaping the school grounds. Much of the time the students are playing, too. Swimming in their underwear, frolicking in the woods, playing doctor using flowers as stethoscopes. And of course, it being a school for girls, there is the ballet.

The Seattle Times calls Innocence a cinematic Rorschach. What the camera shows is girls doing nothing out of ordinary, and in my opinion, even in a manner you couldn't call exploitative. The rest is in the eye of the beholder. Certainly, there are sexual undertones, but not gratuitously.

Before delving further into interpretation of the film, you might consider quitting reading this and watching the movie first. The rest of the review might well be considered spoilers.

A popular interpretation of the movie is that it's an allegory about the childhood of a girl and her growing into sexual maturity. An old story, for sure, but one never before told quite this way. All the ominous semi-nudity, then, would stand for the sexual undercurrents in the lives of young girls, even when the children themselves are unaware of them.

The lives of the children – and, you could argue, of the adults as well (but that's beside the point) – is full of mysteries. For a young child, much of what adults do is beyond their grasp, and so we see little of the adults in Innocence, beyond their roles as providers and a source of rules that are frequently impossible to understand.

And then there is the world that is revealed by puberty: the world with boys. That's where Bianca leaves for, by train, at the end of the movie, although not even she knows it yet.

Ballet, perhaps, is about the grace, discipline, and beauty that girls are expected – even demanded – to try and grow into. Each year the headmistress comes, chooses the most beautiful of the ballet students, and takes her away. We never learn where. Is that the danger facing those who go too far in perfecting their bodies? Will those girls never meet the boys and grow up like the rest?

Unlike most highly symbolic, artsy movies, I can recommend Innocence, even in the case that such movies are not your cup of tea. No single actress really stands above the others, though if I had to pick one that most appeals to me, it would be Zoe as little Iris, with her large eyes, touching confusion about the new world around her, and the sweet, genuine innocence of her emotions.