Is it as good as The Fine Art of Love?

I haven't seen The Fine Art of Love, but judging by the description, it seems like Innocence takes a radically different approach to the source material. If it helps, it's more like Picnic at Hanging Rock (without the sexual overtones).

I have seen both movies. My review contains spoilers ...

I first saw The Fine Art of Love and yesterday I saw "Innocence". I had no idea that "Innocence" was based on the same story but when I saw the reference to "Mine Ha Ha" at the opening credits it reminded me of "The Fine Art of Love" and I wondered if this was going to be likewise.

I think there are similarities but also big differences so both movies gave me a whole different feeling while watching it.
In TFOL the girls are already in their late teens, young women and probably played by adults, in Innocence are the girls are still children, with the oldest being 14 I believe.
The similarities are obviously the ballet and also the friendship between 2 girls.

While TFOL is pretty dark at times (one girl being locked up behind a wall of books, a girl being chased by dogs, one of the main girls hanging herself and her love gets raped by some rich fellow), Innocence was as the title suggest much more innocent. Kids do not get beaten by the teachers, the teachers and servants (old women) who are actually pretty nice and understanding towards the children. In TFOL the message was clear that if you tried to run away, you would end up dead, in Innocence it was also forbidden to leave but they would not chase you if you tried to at least the movie doesn't show. One of the girl drowns when she tries to escape in a rowing boat. The teachers find it terrible certainly the ballet teacher who starts crying at the New Year's party.

Another similarity was that once a year the "directrice" would visit the place and would choose one of the girls to be a star in the ballet show. The girl that wants to be chosen in "Innocence" (just like in TFOL) loses the vote. In Innocence this girl climbs over the wall and is never heard of again. The teachers react like we can never talk about her again, she was not being chased or at least never shown this in comparison to what happened in TFOL where a girl that tried to run was chased by dogs. In TFOL the girl that eventually gets chosen first didn't get chosen either but when her girlfriend revealed that the girl that got chosen was actually in a forbidden relationship with one of the teachers (subtly done by showing them sleeping together).

The friendship between the 2 main girls is also pretty different in the 2 movies. In Innocence it is newcomer Iris who is 6 maybe 7 years old getting best friends with Bianca one of the older girls. Their age is represented by the colour of the ribbon in their hair. Purple was the oldest, red the youngest. In TFOL the 2 main girls (sorry if I forgot the names as it's a while ago I saw it) are much closer to each other and it's fair to say they are lovers which is expressed in a few scenes. That was one of the most important parts in TFOL which was left out in Innocence but given the age of the girls in Innocence that is understandable.

Than the performance in front of the audience and the rich dude is also very different. While in TFOL all of the girls will be performing and only once a year, in Innocence there is a show every night officially for money to keep the school running. In Innocence it's only the older girls (purple ribbons) who perform. The role of the rich guy (whose face we don't see) is reduced to throwing a rose towards Bianca with the words "you are the most beautiful". Nothing else was done with this. In TFOL the rich dude would take the star of the show home and rape her. In my opinion this scene in Innocence was pretty useless as it only led to more confusion.

While TFOL has a clear and regretfully a sad ending (I really loved the relationship between the main girls and hoped they could have run away together in the end) in Innocence the ending is more positive if you can call it an ending. I am not going to say what it is not to spoil it but I was pretty disappointed, most of my questions were actually answered but I totally didn't get why they had to be so mysterious about it since it wasn't ground shaking. In the end I was like okay and that was it?

I thought Innocence was filmed well but the problem was that it was too slow (I like slow like in Japanese movies) but I never had the feeling this movie did go anywhere. Maybe they should have made it more like TFOL to put some more tension in it. In Innocence there was enough mystery to make u curious but there was hardly any tension so in the end I didn't really care any more. In TFOL u feel sorry for the girls as it's a hard life, in comparison to Innocence the girls are treated like princesses. That difference I found striking and probably one of the main reasons that Innocence didn't work well with me while TFOL did.

Oh yes in both movies the waterfall (Mine Haha) is there. In Innocence it is never called by that name though.

I hope this was useful ...