The Innocents (2016)
6/10
Despite a heavy-handed portrayal of the antagonist, this tale of beleaguered nuns in post-WW II Poland, proves fairly gripping
10 August 2018
Warning: Spoilers
The Innocents is a French film by director Anne Fontaine inspired by true events. The protagonist is a French Red Cross student doctor, Mathilde Beaulieu (Lou de Laâge) who is summoned to a convent by the beleaguered Sister Maria (Agata Buzek), in Warsaw, Poland, right after the end of War War II. Mathilde is based on a real doctor, Madeleine Pauliac, who headed a hospital in that area.

Mathilde soon learns from the Mother Superior (Agata Kulesza) that the nuns were systematically raped by Soviet troops who are still in the area and threaten to come back and commit more atrocious crimes. In addition, at least seven of the nuns are pregnant and it's the Mother Superior who is bent on preventing the shameful news from getting out-fearing that the stigma will lead to her flock's excommunication.

Mathilde is thus sworn to secrecy and bonds with Sister Maria. Their relationship is one of the strong points of the film, as Mathilde represents science and the outside world and Maria, spirituality. Both learn from one another and in the end, both heroically deliver children of the pregnant nuns.

Much of what happens at the convent is absorbing, especially the way each nun copes with terrible adversity. Not everything that happens has a happy ending (one nun commits suicide by jumping from a high precipice in the convent). There are also two harrowing scenes, including one in which Soviet troops reappear and are craftily rebuffed after Mathilde makes up a phony story about a typhus outbreak in the convent. What's more Mathilde is almost raped by a Soviet soldier after her jeep is stopped at a checkpoint.

The central weakness of the script is the over-the-top portrayal of the Mother Superior, who is bent on protecting the reputation of the order by falsely informing her charges that she's been putting up the newly minted infants for adoption. In truth, she brings the babies to outside the forest, exposing them to the elements, allowing them to die. Did I believe that this is what actually happened in real life? Not for a second but I suppose the scenarists here needed a shocking turn of events to spice up the denouement.

There's also an ineffective subplot involving Mathilde's boss, a young Jewish doctor, who briefly beds her and later joins her at the convent where he assists in another medical emergency. He's only tangentially integrated into the plot and ultimately has little to do but encourage the main character.

The Innocents ends on a very hopeful note when the nuns adopt a bunch of kids who have been staying with the Red Cross, hiding the fact that their own children were born under circumstances that could have led to scandal and dissolution of convent life. Some may find the ending a bit maudlin but it couldn't have hurt the film's chances at the box office.

Despite the melodramatic excess of the antagonist, The Innocents proves to be fairly gripping, with excellent acting performances all around.
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