French filmmaker Lucile Hadžihalilović unfolds in her films a world that appears hermetic and isolated, existing in liminal states of anxiety and uncertainty. The worlds she crafts represent a kind of incubator—a girls’ boarding school abandoned in the forest, or an island cut off from the mainland. Hadžihalilović explores childhood not as a space of pleasant memories, but as a zone of radical and painful transformations—both bodily and psychological. The characters in her films undergo rigid shaping, disciplining, and marking, turning into objects under the surveillance of mysterious educators or doctors. Hadžihalilović’s visual language is explicated not by traditional narrative or extensive dialogues, but by silence, repetitive rituals, and spatial limitations. All of these are elements connected with the pre-linguistic features of the human psyche. Highlighting these dimensions invites French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and his analytical framework, thereby exposing the uncomfortable truth that human subjectivity is forged not through gentle maturation, but through a traumatic alienation of one’s own body. By isolating her characters from standard societal safety nets, Hadžihalilović compels the viewer to confront the forgotten violence that underpins human socialization, showing that entering culture and language demands the surrender of bodily autonomy to the dictates of the Other.

Foundational to Lacanian theory is the idea of the ontological void which exists within every human being. According to Lacan, human subjectivity (the process of the formation of our “I”) can never be whole—it is split. This split occurs during the individual’s traumatic transition from the Imaginary order, or the world of pre-verbal, mirror-like fusion with the maternal, to the Symbolic order, or the universe of language, law, patriarchal culture, and social norms. The Symbolic order is structured and governed by the Big Other: an abstract system of authority that dictates the rules of the game to the subject, but, critically, conceals an ultimate structural emptiness and a lack of real knowledge. When that which is impossible to express or inscribe into the law breaks through the Symbolic, the subject confronts the Real: a traumatic, unspeakable experience which simultaneously terrifies and fascinates.

Each of Hadžihalilović’s protagonists, from those in her debut film, Innocence (2004), to those in her most recent film, The Ice Tower (2025), are convinced of the existence of an “Other Place:” a place they associate with a certain completeness. Reminders of these Other Places are found in the fragmentation and monotony of their realities, where certain objects and partial fragments serve as signposts for trauma. These places, as well as the traits each protagonist bestows upon them, are complete phantasm, born of responses to these traumas. To trace this psychic architecture, it will be necessary to consider four key works of Hadžihalilović. First, let us consider Innocence (2004), where the girls’ boarding school perfectly illustrates the very mechanism of entering the Symbolic order through rituals and signifiers of “femininity.” Next, we will turn to Evolution (2015) to trace the radical separation of an island populated by young boys and their caretakers, where the collective maternal seeks to fill the ontological void, and where an encounter with the Real destroys the power of the established Big Other. The third section will be dedicated to the film Earwig (2021), where the focus of the film shifts to the guardian, rather than the child, whose subjectivity undergoes ultimate fracturing and destruction due to the guardian’s inability to control his own externalized trauma. Finally, the analysis of the picture The Ice Tower (2025) will demonstrate an alternative finale—the subject’s exit from the Snow Queen’s mirror stage, where the Ego is bound by the terrifying alienation of the Imago, the withstanding of the gaze of the Real, and the desired acquisition of one’s own name and authentic subjectivity.

Innocence (2004) and the Spatialization of the Big Other: From Discipline to Desire

According to Lacan, the Big Other is sustained solely because it conceals a void and a lack of knowledge. This is well represented in Hadžihalilović’s 2004 film Innocence, which takes place at a boarding school in the French countryside. The Big Other is permanently visible to the schoolgirls on a physical map depicting the landscape: several buildings where the girls live, connected by illuminated paths. Movement is possible only where the lights are on, and only at specific times; the boarding school operates on a strict schedule. This entire structure is further constricted by a wall surrounding the school grounds, beyond which it is forbidden to go. The wall—and what lies beyond—is shrouded in secrets. There is danger in these secrets that the girls nevertheless indulge in. The girls themselves are also a part of this coded system: they must wear uniforms and ribbons of specific colors that denote their ages and hierarchical status.

The girls’ participation in the boarding school as the Symbolic order is marked by their lack of knowledge—the girls are not told the purpose of their stay in this isolated facility. Instead, they are given a list of rituals that must be strictly followed. The girls’ strict isolation correlates with the illusion that someone is still “out there” beyond the wall, and that the wall’s secrets can be ascertained by one of them. In reality, however, there is nothing there—the wall is simply a method of keeping the girls locked within the system, under its influence. Under these conditions, the Big Other is the reason for the girls’ existence; if one stops believing in the rules of this boarding school, it simply disappears. The girls’ obedience is cultivated by the governesses (who may be characterized usefully as representative of Lacan’s highest good, or the ideological mask of authority through which the Symbolic order demands absolute obedience, while concealing its own emptiness), who simultaneously sustains the existence of this closed world.

The governesses, Edith and Eva, repeatedly emphasize the importance of the girls’ obedience, yet they themselves are hostages of the system, their role within it limited to supervision. Other women, mostly older, also serve as overseers. Hadžihalilović explores various dimensions of femininity which intersect primarily in the performance of specific gendered duties.

At the boarding school, the girls are “trained” through speech and repetition—they are taught how to stand properly, how to hold their backs, how to look, and ultimately, how to dance. The girls arrive at the school in coffins, like tabulae rasae. These disciplinary gestures and ballet positions are already coded signs of femininity and submission. For the girls, however, these movements carry no symbolic meaning yet—they are experienced purely physically, as mechanical or biological expressions of the body.

One signifier within the boarding school’s system is of the greatest import: ballet, which the girls must master at all costs. Ballet is not an expression of freedom; on the contrary, it is associated with rigid discipline. Through ballet, the girls learn to perform signs of femininity, yet they do not understand exactly what they are being taught. When the girls reach a masterly level, their main task at the school becomes performing on stage, where mysterious adults watch their movements. For this purpose, some of them disappear every evening from the house where they live with the rest of the girls.

Within the boarding school’s structure, equality appears to be a mere facade. When one girl disappears for good, a coffin with another student immediately appears to take her place—looking exactly like the old. Yet beneath this surface of apparent interchangeability, the headmistress always chooses the “best” one, affirming her power to bestow value upon others. Importantly, for any system to be coherent, there must be an exception. In this case, the exception is the ballerina who rises above the rest. The fact that she is chosen confirms that the system is successful—that it has a distinct apex, despite the adults’ insistence on equality.

At one point, Alice, who dreamed of becoming “the chosen one,” fails to do so. She tries to realize this exceptionality in a different way—namely, by rejecting the Big Other and its rules. This is manifested in her unauthorized departure—she climbs over the wall and runs away. Through this step, she exits the Symbolic stage and demonstrates to the girls that escape is possible. In other words, the headmistress is not omnipotent, and her power over them ends where the forest begins.

This crack in the Symbolic order remains visible to the other girls, but despite this, they continue to be raised in accordance with the boarding school’s system and its principles of patriarchal culture. At the boarding school, women (and, disturbingly, the girls) are portrayed as objects of desire for the Big Other—Alice’s escape takes place not because she seeks to break free from the network, but rather as an attempt to emphasize her uniqueness to the Big Other, to become chosen.

Taking the stage is an intermediate step in the girls’ training, followed closely by graduation. During the performances, a specific signifier of adult desire—symbolized by the audience’s gaze and the thrown rose—is definitively established, ultimately causing one of the girls, Nadja, to feel anxiety. She is ready to back down and refuse to participate, but another girl, Bianca, tells her that it is inevitable. Accepting the futility of resistance, Bianca resigns herself to give the performance that is expected of her. While she is dancing, a rose is thrown onto the stage for her, and once again, Bianca’s “exceptionality” is declared. She keeps this flower along with a glove she finds in an empty hall. Afterwards, Bianca tucks away these relics of the performance in a special box and examines them in solitude, envisioning her future. These items are so-called accessories of pleasure. Bianca learns that being a woman means wielding these signs that evoke admiration.

These relics can be considered as representative of Bianca’s connection to her body, which has begun to change. They serve as proof of her potential to exist outside the boarding school. Before she returns to the space shared by the other girls, she immediately discards these items. They hold no meaning for those who surround her, yet they have the power to shatter the girls’ delicate unity. On the verge of leaving, Bianca performs a deliberate fall from a swingset. This staged act serves as a public spectacle for the other girls, formally marking her rupture from their collective experience of childhood and signaling her departure. 

The film’s final scene is a cathartic disruption of tension; the girls break out of the meticulously rigid system the viewer has come to understand. Having graduated from the boarding school, the oldest girls journey to the big city, where they immediately rush into a fountain. This bathing is associated with perhaps the only pleasure available to them at the boarding school, and now it serves as a framework for their pleasure. During the bath, Bianca spots a boy through the blurred stream of water. His features are indistinct; they smile at each other, and, in this final scene, the viewer sees the nature of desire, vague and physically distorted.

Evolution (2015) and the Trauma of the Real

Evolution (2015) also focuses on an isolated space that functions as a distinct Symbolic framework. This time, the viewer is faced with a space of radical separation: an island cut off from the mainland and inhabited by children—all young boys—and the women posing as their mothers and caretakers. They live near a medical center where, sooner or later, the boys will end up subjects for experiments. The women, considered “mothers,” act as guardians; their task is to care for the minors (providing special medication and incessantly convincing them they are sick) until the moment the boys are taken to the center, where their previous connections are severed and they realize these women were not their mothers at all. The guardians represent the Law and the rules the boys must follow. These rules seem logical, as they protect the boys from things that could cause premature harm or even death.

As in any closed Symbolic system, the logic of the island in Evolution is defined by an exception—an anomaly through which the boundaries of the system are revealed. This becomes exemplified through Nicolas, one of the boys who, while swimming, stumbles upon a corpse. In Lacanian terms, his discovery is equivalent to an encounter with the Real, which the boy cannot bear, and he immediately flees. He tries to share his discovery with his mother, but she convinces him it is not true, sparking further suspicion in Nicolas. With each passing day, he becomes more and more convinced there is a secret he is not privy to. This secret unfolds when he decides to break the rules; instead of sleeping, he follows his mother, and eventually all the mothers, at night. Nicolas witnesses something he is not meant to bear: a peculiar ritual on the shore.

If positioned as the functional units of Lacan’s Symbolic order, these women still retain the possibility of pleasure, which they realize in this ritual. It is important to note that, in this system, speech is possible only when they declare rules and define the everyday; speech vanishes when the obscene, ritualized underside of their systemic existence (the dark complement to the regulated pleasure permitted by the Symbolic order) is realized. Instead, during the ritual, the women emit peculiar orgasmic sounds as they gather in the dark and pass a mass which, to the viewer, closely resembles an infant to one another. The child is meant to be the object that fills the structural void within the woman. In this scene, motherhood symbolizes something beyond language. This is a ritual of collective “void-filling;” the women appear to merge into a single body, and the act of transference is an act of the circulation of pleasure. When they return to the homes where they left the sleeping boys, they resume their roles as guardians and impose a Symbolic grid upon the Real; a transition is signaled when the women wash their bodies, cleansing themselves of the ritual. 

Traumatized by the experience of witnessing this ritual, Nicolas attempts to depict the scene in his drawings. His “mother” notices this and, as a perfect functionary of the system, reports it to the proper authority when transferring Nicolas to the medical center. His drawings arouse suspicion because through this forbidden act, he develops his own subjectivity—he transitions from a passive object of experimentation into an agent capable of jouissance (in Lacan’s sense, a transgressive, painful intensity that breaks through the Symbolic order’s regulated control, as opposed to mere pleasure).

In the medical center, the routine procedures of the system continue. However, one of the nurses, Stella, begins to act outside the collective alignment. The boy piques her interest, and she observes how he preserves his agency even under these conditions: his silent resistance to the medical procedures, his persistent gaze, his drive to capture his inner world on paper. She returns his notebook to him so he can continue to draw, and eventually decides to save the exhausted boy by placing him on a boat. In the end, he finds himself alone, facing the bright lights of another city.

In Evolution, Hadžihalilović shows the viewer a world where subjectivity has not yet been born or has long since died. The women on the island are conduits for a power greater than themselves. They cannot articulate it through speech or sign; they are merely priestesses of the Big Other. 

Earwig (2021) and the Fragmentation of the Guardian

While in her previous films Hadžihalilović focused on the youth pupils, in Earwig (2021), she shifts the focus to the guardian, specifically a scientist named Albert. He lives in a flat with Mia, a young girl resembling a mechanical doll, and performs daily manipulations on her teeth, which appear to be ice-cold prosthetics. This man’s entire life appears to consist of Sisyphean repetitions of the same actions; he replaces the girl’s dentures every day, but no positive progress is observed. One gets the impression that by adhering to this routine, Albert is trying to structure his own trauma: the loss of his wife. It seems the protagonist has reduced himself to a single function: ensuring the survival of the young girl in his care. Only the intermittent chattering of her icy teeth reveals the possibility that something lies outside the Symbolic network. The unassimilable, non-linguistic sound is residue from the Real, impermeable to Albert’s structural control. 

Albert is constantly under the supervision of the Big Other, represented by a disembodied voice over the telephone. One day, this voice suddenly tells Albert he must prepare the girl for life outside. In that moment, he realizes that everything he had heretofore reported to the Big Other was untrue—he failed his task. It is revealed that the guilt he feels over not being able to “cure” Mia mirrors the guilt he feels over the loss of his wife. By watching Mia, he was trying to control his own grief. He is afraid of his failure, which is why he exists in a hermetic space. Repeating these closed cycles, Albert feels the relative safety and stability body that cannot transcend its own limits, preventing his traumatized self from falling apart.

The failure concerning Mia’s teeth finally pushes Albert out into the world—into a bar, where he tries to dissolve into the crowd. His emptiness and sorrow are immediately recognized. Here, Albert sheds his role as a guardian. He acts aggressively to protect the remnants of his illusion—Celeste, the bartender who previously inspired affection, suddenly ceases to be an ideal image. Seeking to possess Celeste, whom Albert views as a mere object, he harms and disfigures her face—though, within the film’s hallucinatory logic, it remains ambiguous whether this act occurs in objective reality or as part of Albert’s internal delirium. Regardless, her memory and spectral gaze haunt him during his subsequent breakdown, becoming an internalized visualization of his own fragmentation and failure to control his trauma. Mia also exemplifies this lack of control—when she is locked in the apartment, Albert feels his own emotions are under control; however, when she goes outside, and her oddities are made apparent, so too does Albert’s trauma become visible to everyone. Finally, Albert calls upon the Big Other; he asks for help, for pressure to be removed from himself and responsibility to be placed upon the system. Albert declares that he is no longer Mia’s guardian. The presence of the master, who arrives to reassure Albert, creates an illusion for him that this is merely a technical problem rather than an ontological catastrophe. It does not work—the chattering of Mia’s teeth makes her “too alive—” Albert can no longer regard her as simply a symbolic object, he must acknowledge her personhood. 

After this breaking point, Albert completely severs any connection to Mia. He explicates himself solely as a function, an intermediary within the system. In the final scene, we witness Albert once again confronting the image of his deceased wife, whom he longs to approach; however, Celeste appears in her place. Communication between them is impossible because the Symbolic Order as such is exhausted, leaving only physical struggle. In this duel, the boundaries between them blur—the subject is so fragmented that, in striking the other, he feels his own destruction. A final loss of subjectivity occurs: as the physical struggle merges their bodies, by striking her, Albert undergoes his own dissolution, leaving him a hollow, reactive shell, devoid of speech and agency.

The Ice Tower (2025) and the Screen of Fantasy

If Earwig traces the absolute disintegration of the subject into a mere function, Hadžihalilović’s The Ice Tower (2025) shifts the focus to the opposite psychic movement: the desperate, phantasmatic attempt to construct a subjectivity through radical self-alienation. The film begins when the protagonist, Jeanne, leaves her makeshift shelter and heads into the city without plans, relying only on vague, phantasmatic notions of escaping her past and reinventing herself through an idealized persona. In the city, she renounces her name and adopts the name of the girl who impressed her with her ice skating—Bianca. Bianca is capable of things Jeanne cannot afford; she becomes desirable and accepted on a film set, her deception granting her confidence. Everywhere she goes, she is accompanied by symbols of cold, which are directly linked to her deceased mother. The cause of Jeanne’s desire lies precisely in these elements, as they are structurally equivalent to a kind of rupture—the splitting of the subject. These small, lingering details act as reminders that trigger her desire, functioning as structural equivalents to the original rupture—the splitting of the subject. This process intensifies when the girl encounters the object of her future adoration: Christina, who embodies the phantasmagorical image of the Snow Queen. This image is extremely difficult to separate from Christina herself, and it seems she is unable to step out of this role; she is in a constant struggle with the image everyone on set associates her with. To those around her, she is a mystical being associated with jouissance, but behind this facade lies an ontological void: a complete lack of selfhood outside of her cinema screen persona, leaving her reduced to a spectacle without an autonomous identity. Therefore, she desperately needs an Other, Jeanne, who will allow her to feel fulfilled.

A unique connection exists between Jeanne and Christina, represented in small details of their appearances that they unintentionally exchange: the crystal that Jeanne cuts from the Snow Queen’s dress, as well as Jeanne’s beads, which suddenly end up in Christina’s possession. All of this points to the mechanism of metonymy and the Lacanian object a, where a minor, partial object (such as the crystal or the beads in this film) acts as the “trifle” that anchors desire and binds fragmented subjects together. According to Lacan, we never perceive or desire the other subject as a whole; instead, we are captured and disrupted by a singular, partial detail—often a traumatic, symptomatic feature that exposes the subject’s splitting. Each girl possesses a “part:” the crystal and the beads illustrate that each of them is never whole. These details, rather than the subjects themselves, represent one woman to the other. 

To further complicate the layered meanings, the crystal itself appears as a screen onto which fantasy is projected—one can see countless realms within it. One gazing into it is captivated not by the contemplation of reality, but by what this crystal reveals. This is the Other Place, a peculiar fairy-tale realm where pleasure is complete and undivided; all of Hadžihalilović’s heroines yearn for this Other Place, beginning with the girls in Innocence whose lives were confined by a high wall.

Christina demands absolute obedience and adoration from Jeanne, even requiring her to risk her life to prove her devotion. However, as they stand together on the edge of the abyss, this demand comes to a breaking point; a sudden awakening occurs in Jeanne. When she gazes at Christina, the illusion of the Snow Queen collapses—Jeanne realizes that the complete union Christina seeks would necessitate her total destruction. Rather than an idealized, all-powerful figure, Jeanne recognizes her own reflection in Christina—both she and Christina are fundamentally fragmented, empty, and defined by a deep-seated loss. Instead of fulfilling her desire, this mirror merely reflects her own lack back at her with terrifying clarity. Refusing to be consumed, Jeanne takes a step back—an act of refusal that becomes her first step toward self-preservation.

At the end of the film, Jeanne is finally able to proclaim her own selfhood. She goes to Christina’s house and declares that her real name is Jeanne. By uttering this, she defines the distance between herself and Christina, emerging as a subject and establishing herself within the Symbolic order: the domain of language and law. However, Jeanne is still unable to confront the traumatic void of the Other. She gazes into the Snow Queen’s crystal, which allows her to perceive the “wholeness” of the Snow Queen, the Other, from a safe, scopic distance. Like Nicolas in Evolution, Jeanne cannot bear to confront the Real, and flees from it. This is Jeanne’s initiation into the Symbolic order—when she holds her gaze upon the Real, she assumes the position of an autonomous subject of desire. She names herself, establishes linguistic agency, and maintains a vital distance from the Other; eventually, she is able to face it in full. 

Lucile Hadžihalilović’s cinema serves as a profound visualization of the Lacanian struggle for subjectivity. Through the rigid structures of the Symbolic order, her films trace the evolution of the individual from a mere object of the Big Other’s discipline to a subject of desire capable of facing the Real. In Hadžihalilović’s filmography, we observe the characters moving progressively closer to Lacan’s Real. We see the total subjection of the body in Innocence and its bodily engineering in Evolution, leading to the complete psychic dissolution of the guardian in Earwig. It is only in The Ice Tower that this trajectory finds an alternative resolution. Here, a rejection of the traumatic occurs, an attempt at fusion with the Real, and, as a result, the acceptance of one’s own name. In this way, Jeanne withstands the gaze of the Other. Hadžihalilović’s filmography demonstrates that the yearning for the undivided Other Place remains an elusive phantasm. A split subject can truly emerge precisely due to the metonymic remnants of trauma and the necessity of a symbolic distance.

Works Referenced

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: “On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge,” 1972–1973 (Encore)

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: “The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis” (1964)