Evolution (2015 film)
| Evolution | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Lucile Hadžihalilović |
| Produced by | Julien Naveau Sylvie Pialat Sebastián Álvarez |
| Written by | Lucile Hadžihalilović Alante Kavaite |
| Starring | Max Brebant Roxane Duran Julie-Marie Parmentier |
| Music by | Zacarías M. de la Riva |
| Cinematography | Manuel Dacosse |
| Edited by | Nassim Gordji-Tehrani |
| Distributed by | Potemkine Films (France) |
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Release date
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Running time
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81 minutes |
| Country | France Spain Belgium |
| Language | French |
Evolution is a 2015 French drama film directed by Lucile Hadžihalilović. It was shown in the Vanguard section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.
Nicolas is a sickly young boy living by the sea with his mother. One day while swimming in the sea he thinks he sees the body of a dead boy covered by a starfish. He tells his mother, who goes diving and brings him back the starfish telling him there is no body there.
Later, at night, his mother brings back the body and the other mothers gather around it.
The following day Nicolas plays with his starfish. After another boy mocks him for being afraid of it he grows angry and attacks the boy, later hacking off one of the arms of the starfish. After his outburst his mother takes him to a hospital for observation. At the hospital Nicolas has an incision just above his stomach and finds himself in a ward with other boys who have been similarly operated on.
Once he has been released Nicolas begins to suspect his mother and the nurses of having lied to him. He and his friend, Victor, sneak out in the middle of the night to observe what the mothers are doing, Victor runs back home , but Nicolas sees the woman lying together completely nude and writhing around in the mud. At home, he sneaks a peek at his mother, showering off the mud, and observes that she has what appears to be suckers on her back.
Back at the hospital Nicolas is given an ultrasound where, to his mother's joy, they hear the heart beat of a fetus.
Victor is operated on and a creature is taken out of his stomach and put in a jar. The nurses tell Nicolas and the other boys that Victor has recovered and give them a conch shell on behalf of Victor. Nicolas's mother visits him and he accuses her of not being his mother. One of the other boys observes that his mother is not really his mother either.
At night the nurses watch videos of caesarean sections being performed.
Nicolas develops a friendship with one of the nurses, Stella, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Simonetta Vespucci, née Cattaneo (1453–1476), wife of Marco Vespucci, who died very young. There is some evidence that Simonetta was the inspiration for Botticelli's painting The Birth of Venus (from the sea). Stella sneaks Nicolas crayons and draws with him, which also reinforces the Botticelli allusion. One night she takes him out to the water and shows him the suckers on her back, allowing him to touch them before taking him into the water. Once inside the water she holds him down until he drowns, then revives him using CPR. Nicholas awakens once more and goes back to the hospital where he sees one of the boys floating in a tank.
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