THE INNOCENTS – Review

Courtesy of Music Box Films

The French drama THE INNOCENTS takes place shortly after World War II in Poland, a story involving the war’s devastation and aftermath, the occupying Russian forces who drove out the Germans, and some cloistered Catholic nuns. As such, it will inevitably draw comparison to IDA, the searing drama that explored issues of post-war communist Poland and identity for a woman raised by nuns. Although both films deal with nuns and post-war Poland, IDA’s story largely takes place years after the war, while this one takes place in 1945, in its immediate aftermath.

THE INNOCENTS is a rare thing, a story set in a war-torn environment but featuring almost entirely strong female characters. French director Anne Fontaine co-wrote the screen adaptation of the true story. Her previous films include COCO BEFORE CHANEL and GEMMA BOVARY, which she also co-wrote.

The central character was based on a real woman Madeleine Pauliac,who was a doctor in an era when women physicians were much more rare. The story takes place in 1945 in Poland, where French Red Cross doctors have been sent to aid in the repatriation of French soldiers and survivors of the death camps. They are just there to help French citizens but are working alongside the occupying Russian army, the “liberators” who drove out the Germans.

Mathilde (Lou de Laage) is a young French intern assisting a French Jewish doctor named Samuel (Vincent Macaigne), when a Polish nun appears at the hospital begging for a doctor. The young nun Teresa (Eliza Rycembel) – a novice, really – is very young, very frightened and very persistent. Although she is not supposed to treat patients on her own (or treat Poles), Mathilde nonetheless agrees  to help, leaving without asking permission. At the isolated convent, Mathilde finds a nun in labor – and five more in the latter stages of pregnancy, all victims of rape by Russian soldiers. Mathilde does not speak Polish but is helped by one of the nuns, Maria (Agata Buzek), who speaks French.

The nun and the young doctor quickly form a tentative friendship. Just as Mathilde is helping against hospital rules, Maria has sent for a doctor without the permission of the convent’s head, Mother Abesse (Agata Kulesza). The mother superior eventually, reluctantly, agrees to the doctor’s help but insists it must be in secret. Although the nuns are victims of rape, the Mother Abesse wants to keep the pregnancies secret, fearing the disapproval of the common people around them and avoiding further attention from the occupying Russians. One baby has already been born, and the Mother Abesse has taken it way to a family, but the young mother’s death in childbirth revealed how little these spiritual women know of the practical matters of childbirth.

Director Fontaine keeps this thoughtful drama moving at a brisk pace, while still allowing enough quiet moments to develop character and for characters to explore complex issues. Cinematographer Caroline Champetier gives the film an austere beauty, contrasting the nuns’ black-and-white habits against the snowy landscape, and painting everything else in muted colors. The film was shot in Poland, with exteriors filmed at an abandoned convent  The old convent lends a sense of age and of  timelessness, appropriate for the long view the sisters take of the world and their faith.

The drama does explore the nature of faith for those who commit their lives to it in a deeper and more unexpected way than one usually sees in film, something that must be credited to the director’s careful research. However this brings us to one of the problems with this worthy but flawed film. While this true story of nuns raped by soldiers is gripping stuff, the film cannot quite decide on its central focus. Is it a tale of faith, of the nuns’ physical and spiritual ordeal, contrasting their experience against the rules of the Catholic church? Is it a condemnation of the excesses of the Russian army, who arrive as liberators but then terrorize as rapists? Or is this a coming-of-age story of a young woman doctor, facing a trial by fire that calls on her do things she never expected and challenging her view of the world? The plot mixes some of all three, which means that it sometimes skims across the topics instead of delving deeply into them.

The real Madeleine Pauliac, on whom Mathilde is based, was not the film’s inexperienced student but the chief doctor of the Warsaw French Hospital. The screenplay was based on her story as written by her nephew Philippe Maynial, after she died in 1946.  Making Mathilde an inexperienced student doctor, who even comments she had not completed her studies when she volunteered for the Red Cross, makes her bold decision to help the more dramatic.

The acting is excellent throughout. Lou de Laage, who had a break-out role in BREATHE, is perfect as Mathilde, where her beauty and innocent look contrast perfectly with the emotional steel she has to find within her self to carry out a difficult task in secret, sneaking out under cover of darkness, where she must evade the Russian army patrolling the countryside. As Sister Maria, Agata Buzek is mesmerizing, a knowing woman with a more worldly life before her spiritual calling. She and Mathilde bond despite their differences, in friendship. At the same time, Maria grapples with her spiritual calling, the demands of obedience of the Church’s rules and her feelings of human compassion and the moral right. Agata Kulesza, who was so riveting as the devilish Wanda in IDA, plays a more opaque character as Mother Abesse, who makes troubling choices which she believes are best for the convent and the other nuns. Vincent Macaigne as Samuel, with whom Mathilde has a casual wartime affair, gives some voice to the Jewish viewpoint, having lost his whole family in the death camps. Discussions between world-weary Samuel and more hopeful Mathilde are used to bring out aspects of both characters, and Samuel also adds bits of dry, dark humor.

THE INNOCENTS is a worthwhile, moving drama about outrages of wartime, survival, and the power of the spiritual in the face of unspeakable challenge.

THE INNOCENTS opens Friday, July 8th at Plaza Frontenac, St. Louis.

RATING: 4 OUT OF 5 STARS