Light up the Void  

Lucile Hadzihalilovic continues her exploration of a cinema of unease and mystery with Earwig, a hypnotic and chilling work, a world away from traditional narrative cinema. Freely adapted from Brian Catling's novel, this feature film stands out as a unique sensory experience, bordering on the fantastic and the dreamlike, where silence weighs more heavily than words.

Lucile Hadzihalilovic asserts a radical aesthetic here, where image takes precedence over narrative. The film progresses through layers of muted anxiety, in damp and crepuscular settings, punctuated by muffled sounds, endless corridors, and almost ghostly human figures. The director works with the film material like a sculptor: each shot is carefully composed, each silence calculated, each shiver weighed.

Far from spectacular effects, Earwig relies on a creeping, almost tactile anxiety, reminiscent of the films of David Lynch or Tarkovsky, but with a more clinical approach. Dialogue is sparse, the pace deliberately slow, almost hypnotic, like a fever dream from which one cannot awaken.

Rather than a story to solve, Earwig offers an enigma to contemplate. Symbols abound—ice, teeth, mirrors, water—but defy any clear explanation. It's a cinema that disturbs, that demands the viewer accept not understanding everything. Through Albert and Mia, Hadzihalilovic perhaps questions control, transmission, grief, or even metamorphosis—but always elliptically, never didactically.

Disturbing, slow-paced, and profoundly sensory, Earwig is not a film one "loves" in the traditional sense. It's an experience to be lived, or to be avoided. Some will see it as a fascinating, almost incantatory work; others, as a hermetic exercise. In any case, with Earwig, Lucile Hadzihalilovic confirms her unique place in the landscape of European cinema: that of a filmmaker of mystery, suggestion, and pure strangeness.

TECHNICAL FACT SHEET

Original title: Earwig
Year of production: 2021
Countries of production: United Kingdom, Belgium, France
Genre: Drama / Mystery / Gothic
Running time: 114 minutes (1h54)
Original language: English
French release date: January 18, 2023
Format: Color, Scope (2.35)
Sound: 5.1
Age rating: Restricted for under 12

Direction and Screenplay

• Director: Lucile Hadžihalilović
• Screenplay: Lucile Hadžihalilović & Geoff Cox
• Based on: the novel Earwig by Brian Catling
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Main Cast

• Romane Hemelaers — Mia
• Paul Hilton — Albert
• Alex Lawther
• Romola Garai
• Peter Van Den Begin
• Michael Pas
• Isabelle De Hertogh
• Anastasia Robin
• Marie Bos
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Crew

• Director of Photography: Jonathan Ricquebourg
• Editing: Adam Finch
• Original Music: Augustin Viard, Warren Ellis, Nicolas Becker
• Production Design: Julia Irribarria
• Costume Design: Jackye Fauconnier
• Sound: Bruno Schweisguth, Ken Yasumoto and collaborators
• Producers: Andy Starke, Jean des Forêts, Amélie Jacquis, Jean-Yves Roubin, Cassandre Warnauts