**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.
