Jamie passion and passionfruit!

A strange French film about a boarding school for girls set in a forest.  The girls from 6 to 12 perform strict rituals and only ever see two teachers and some old servants.  And yet they organise themselves in this bucolic society and it seems safer than the outside world.  Some girls want to leave however and others – the older ones – have a secret as they are prepared for leaving the school to move on to other things.  We are never quite sure whether a menace is going to come or not – there are tragedies but they are dealt with in a matter of fact way.  The ending is really rather bewildering.  What exactly is the message or metaphor here?  Parts of it – the repeated butterfly metaphor seem too obvious and other parts simply a visual essay in dark beauty.  Hard to know whether this was the right story to put into film – it is based on a Wedekind novella but I think that many people might reach the end and ask, so what?

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