The Innocents

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Anne Fontaine/Starring: Lou de Laage, Agata Buzek, Agata Kulesza, Vincent Macaigne and Katarzyna Dabrowska

Luxembourgish director Anne Fontaine's searing, new period drama; The Innocents examines complex, moral choices facing a Polish monastery in the months after World War II. The nuns' faith and sacred vows are severely challenged in the aftermath of brutal violation. Fontaine's film invites the audience to contemplate the moral implications of actions taken by a mother superior to protect her fellow sisters. The film is unsparingly stark but its power is beyond question; leaving the audience to consider how horrors visited upon humans sometimes trigger reflexive acts of self-preservation, which can be extreme and commensurately violent. Fontaine's film resonates. Its power is partly derived from its haunting images, riveting performances and a story that is both visceral and dark.

Lou de Laage (from the film Breathe) plays Mathilde Beaulieu; a French Red Cross medical volunteer serving in Poland, six months after World War II. Though her work keeps her highly occupied, she is called upon by a nun named Maria (Agata Buzek) from a nearby monastery. Though Mathilde is forbidden to leave her post, she finds she cannot resist Maria's insistent pleas. In a prior scene, we heard the anguished wails of a female voice in the convent during prayers. Though her fellow sisters are able to ignore the sounds of suffering, Maria cannot. Mathilde agrees to visit the monastery in the evening after her shift while Maria must resort to surreptitious means to allow the young, French woman on the premises. Knowing the mother superior forbids any outside intervention in monastery affairs, Maria risks punitive measures for allowing Mathilde inside.

Upon arrival, Maria directs Mathilde to a room where a nun rests on a bed. It's immediately obvious the nun lying on her back is very pregnant. Surprised though purposeful, Mathilde informs Maria and her fellow sisters that a breach birth will be necessary. She works quickly and before long, a healthy baby is brought forth from the delirious mother's womb.

Mathilde tells Maria she must return with Penicillin, which the nun forbids; fearing the mother superior will discover the French Red Cross worker has been on the premises. Mathilde convinces her otherwise.
In her exchanges with Maria, Mathilde learns the monastery was occupied by Russian soldiers during Poland's liberation from the Nazis. She also learns seven nuns were violated by Russian soldiers, leaving them with child.

When Mathilde returns the next night, an incident inside the monastery brings her to the attention of the mother superior (Agata Kulesza; seen previously in the film Ida), who is angry for her intrusion but overlooks it. The mother superior explains the nun's delicate situation to Mathilde. She mentions how the monastery was first terrorized by the Nazis before the Russians followed suit. The mother also tells Mathilde the monastery's secret must remain, lest they be subjected to humiliation, shame and possible eviction. Mathilde understands keeping the public ignorant of the nun's ignominious condition is the mother superior's moral imperative.

But as Mathilde risks her superior's wrath by spending time at the convent, she also becomes involved with a Red Cross doctor named Samuel (Vincent Macaigne), who complicates her nighttime excursions to the monastery. Mathilde's relationship with Samuel is a subplot that adds little to the overall story though he does play a key part in the narrative later in the film.

The film takes a darker and more harrowing turn when Mathilde is almost raped at a Soviet checkpoint and we learn the mother superior's intentions to give the babies up for adoption are fraught with disturbing motives. Her secret actions come to light when a nun named Sofia discovers her family never received her newborn. In a scene sure to shock, we see exactly how the mother superior addresses the baby problem without the public discovering the monastery's grim secret. Though her efforts to protect the nun's secrets are ostensibly altruistic; her actions compromise her vows and piety. The mother superior is one of the more fascinating characters in the story. Her well-meaning attempt to help the nuns is actually a bleak application of utilitarian ethics.

Fontaine gives the audience an opportunity to know some of the expectant nuns in the story. One tells Mathilde she has no intention of keeping her vows and is eager to leave the monastery for her boyfriend. Another experiences overpowering maternal love, in spite of her vows, as she gazes at her baby.

As the monastery becomes dangerously close to being exposed, the nuns hatch a plan that involves the town orphans that will provide them a plausible alibi for having babies on the premises and the means to keep their newborns.

If the ending seems upbeat, there is much tragedy in the story; particularly for the mother superior; whose conscience will most likely never recover from her sad, unforgivable actions.

Fontaine's sensitivity for her characters is astonishing. She draws tremendous, nuanced performances from her cast. Particularly fine are Lou de Laage, Agata Kulesza and Agata Buzek.

The title is wonderfully ambiguous, for it applies to most of the characters; young and old. Everyone in the film is innocent in some manner and at some time. Even the nuns who are to bear children; for the concept of motherhood is alien to them. They are also naifs who know little of mother superior's sinister intentions.

The Innocents is quite a film. It may leave one thinking about the story's philosophical and moral implications and the fascinating relationships between the nuns and Mathilde, which are intriguingly intricate. Though the nuns are separated from the secular world; cloistered behind holy walls; the film effectively shows what happens when that barrier is shattered or at least made permeable. What's left is their humanity, tragic and triumphant.

Breathe

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Melanie Laurent/Starring: Josephine Japy, Lou de Laage, Roxane Duran and Isabelle Carre'

Melanie Laurent, renowned for her performances in front of the camera, steps behind it again for her directorial effort Breathe; which she adapted from the French novel of the same name. Laurent's compositional skills are highly conspicuous, as is her ability to coax some fine performances from her female characters. Breathe is an intriguing psychological drama; a story of head-games between two teens whose intense friendship skews toward contempt rather than mutual love and affection.

Josephine Japy plays Charlie; a student in a French high school who seems pretty much like her teen peers. Her mother and father are separated and are often engaged in rancorous displays which Charlie witnesses on a regular basis. She also sees how her mother Vanessa (Isabelle Carre') is reduced to pawn status before her father's Svengali-esque control.

In Charlie's literature class, we hear a discussion about whether passion is destructive. Many great minds are quoted, particularly Nietzsche, who once said that passion is easier to end than control. This being a French film, we know the subject of passion and its perilous effects will become a major theme in the story.

Into Charlie's life comes Sarah (Lou de Laage), a new student who immediately insinuates herself not only into the high school social life but more importantly, Charlie's. Sarah mentions to the class that her mother is in Nigeria doing charity work for an NGO, which gives her a sheen of worldliness that impresses the other kids.

As Charlie's affection for Sarah simmers and boils, she begins to ignore her best friend Victoire (Roxane Duran). Charlie and Sarah become inseparable but before long, the friendship enters darker territory. Sarah incurs her friend's ire when she joins Charlie's boyfriend on a plane ride; an act that leaves Charlie callously disregarded. Sarah also becomes thick with Charlie's friends, which begins to rankle her. The romantic stories Sarah tells of her own life begin to annoy the untraveled and innocent Charlie. Particularly vexing are Sarah's stories of sexual conquest, which she uses to humiliate her virginal friend.
As the story progresses, Sarah's unkind and edgier nature emerges.
The friendship takes an even darker turn when Charlie follows Sarah home one night. Suspicious about Sarah's stories about her mother's charity work, Charlie discovers her friend has been concocting wild stories to mask an ugly truth. She finds Sarah lives in a run-down apartment building and peeking through the window, she learns her friend lives with an abusive, alcoholic mother. The scene is exceptional for the slow pan of the the apartment windows, where we see the violent drama inside pass into different rooms until the camera comes to rest on the outside of the building, where the grim revelation plays on Charlie's face. The profound truth about Sarah's life and her need to deceive Charlie and her friends is captured in this one, inventive shot.

When Charlie exposes Sarah's deception, we see the friendship come undone in psychologically-corrosive intricacy. Even after Sarah begins to spread vicious rumors about her friend's sex life; going so far as to scribble scurrilous graffiti on the school walls, Charlie maintains a bizarre loyalty; as if reconciliation is a possibility.
It's easy to see how Charlie's parent's relationship is mirrored in her own. As her mother always sacrifices personal dignity for the sake of having her husband's attention and affection, Charlie is willing to sacrifice her own for the sake of earning Sarah's love.

We can finally see how Nietzsche's words echo truthfully: ending a passion is easier than controlling it.

It isn't surprising how the story ends but it is nonetheless shocking and almost inevitable. Though the story is tremendously sympathetic to Charlie, we see in the end that she is more complicated than she appears and less the passive victim she portrays to the world.

I've always believed the French are masters at psychological character studies. Only a French director could have written and directed a film like Breathe. Comparisons have been made to Blue is the Warmest Color but though that film entered the realm of erotica, Laurent's story only suggests latent sexuality between Charlie and Sarah.

Japy and Laage's performances compliment Laurent's excellent direction. Both women have few difficulties exploring the seemingly endless shadows their characters conceal and expose.

Throughout the film, we see Charlie use an inhaler to combat her virulent asthma. It is interesting to see that her asthmatic episodes seem connected to her relationship with Sarah. The attacks almost seem to be a symptom of the relationship. This idea is strongly supported in the final scene, which I won't reveal here. Charlie's passion for Sarah is so powerful as to literally and figuratively rob her of breath.

Breathe tells us that we should expect great things from Laurent. Her film, like her character who gasps for air, leaves one breathless. If only American teen movies were as fascinating and richly observed as this film. In American teen films, we get weepy characters with cancer or in the case of the insipid Paper Towns; this summer's multiplex teen drama, high school kids are as deep as tortillas. Unfortunately, Laurent's film will play on fewer screens in America than the forthcoming Maze Runner sequel or the final installment of The Hunger Games. Too bad, Laurent's film is more challenging and is certainly more deserving of the attention that is squandered on those glossy wrecks.