Based on a true story from post-World War II Poland, this satisfying drama follows a young female French doctor who finds herself caught up in the lives of nuns, traumatised and shamed by their wartime suffering.
Anne Fontaine’s finest film in years observes the crises of faith that emerge in a war-ravaged Polish convent.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2016
The Innocents 2016
Les innocentes
Anne Fontaine’s (Coco avant Chanel) compelling and affecting drama The Innocents illuminates events that occurred in Poland in the aftermath of World War II, placing women’s experiences of war very much at its centre. Mathilde (Lou de Laâge), a young doctor with the French Red Cross, is entreated by a desperate young nun to make a secret visit to a nearby abbey. She arrives to find a young sister in labour. Mathilde is soon drawn into the intensely private world of the nuns as they confide the nightmare of the ‘liberating’ army that led to their predicament. Severely traumatised, some have refused to admit even to themselves that they are pregnant.
Concealing her involvement from the Red Cross, Mathilde seeks allies in the convent where many remain cowed by a grim hierarchy determined to suppress all evidence of their ‘shame’. She also enlists the support of a colleague, a Jewish doctor whose hopes of impressing her must outweigh his bitter scepticism about Polish Catholic piety. Elegantly shot and superbly performed in Polish and French, Fontaine’s war film eschews graphic depictions of violence to delineate and uphold the common humanity of those who foster renewal in its wake.
“The Innocents is a lovely ode to healing through solidarity… Kudos are due to Anne Fontaine for not only finding a tale not often seen, but imbuing it with a feminine perspective so often erased from wartime narratives… We’ve held up many wartime heroes from this era, and this unsung heroine deserves to be celebrated among them.” — Monica Castillo, RogerEbert.com