Comedy of Innocence

Soon after his ninth birthday, a boy with a wild imagination Camille (Nils Hugon) starts acting strangely. He claims that his name is actually Paul and his parents aren't, in fact, his real parents. Instead he insists his real mother is a woman called Isabella (Jeanne Balibar), a violin teacher whose own son drowned some two years previous. To divulge anything else would be unfair, but for the first hour or so of the oddly titled The Comedy of Innocence, it appears that this is some sort of a supernatural thriller, a distant relative of The Sixth Sense. Over this period, the movie shudders between psychological thriller and downright confusion, setting up something tangible for the audience to grasp and then, almost as quickly, snatching it away. Ruiz (who arguably made the first successful adaptation of Proust's Le Temps Retrove back in 1999) seems to enjoy playing tricks on the audience and confounding their expectations. While sometimes these ploys succeed, other devices he employs - like his usage of the film-within-a-film device - appear to be a little tired and laboured. Still, this is an entertaining enough excursion and the performances - especially from Hugon - are quietly impressive.