The Innocents (2016)

With seventeen writing and sixteen directing credits on her CV it's fair to say that Anne Fontaine has paid her dues and knows how films are put together; I've seen and enjoyed perhaps a dozen of these but I have no hesitation in saying that The Innocents surpasses anything she has done by a country mile; all I can say is that this is Fontaine's Citizen Kane and in my book that's another way of saying the best there is. It's one of an increasing number of films set in and/or either side of World War Two based on actual incidents, Katyn is another, for example, but it would be wrong to assume that this was sufficient to guarantee success. For that we have to look to the creative term or, to put it another way you can deliver a ton of Carera marble to a sculptor but it's up to the sculptor to fashion it into something outstanding or something mediocre. Fontaine, given her marble and enlisting the aid of three outstanding actresses - Lou de Laage, Agata Buzek and Agata Kulesza - fashioned it into a masterpiece. The plot has been described else where: 1945, Poland. Lou de Laage is working with the French Red Cross. A nun solicits her help, she turns her away. A little later she sees the same nun, on her knees in the snow praying desperately for heavenly intervention. Breaking the rules of her contract she 'borrows' an ambulance and accompanies the nun to the convent where she finds a woman about to give birth. The Abbess, Agata Lulesza, explains that they have taken the girl in out of pity but rejects any help. Another nun, Agata Buzek, speaks French and persuades the Abbess to accept the help of the French doctor. So begins a bonding between the French doctor and the Polish nun. The first revelation is that Russian soldiers visited the convent three times leaving seven nuns pregnant. Later the doctor discovers the Abbess has syphilis. There is, if possible, a final revelation even more horrific than the en masse raping of seven nuns. Shot in colour but muted to resemble black and white, in a bleak Polish winter with virtually no music Fontaine holds the attention effortlessly and has surely coaxed Award winning performances out of the three leads or else there is no justice in the world yet every single performance is A +. The highest praise is not good enough for this film.

The French film Les innocentes was shown in the U.S. with the translated title The Innocents (2016). Anne Fontaine directed this powerful movie.The year is 1945, just after the end of World War II. A French Red Cross unit is sent into Poland. Their mission was to care for French survivors of the camps. Among the Red Cross staff is a young medical student, Mathilde Beaulieu, played by Lou de Laâge. Early in the film, we learn a terrible secret about the nuns in a nearby convent. Many of them are pregnant, because they were raped by Russian soldiers. Mathilde learns of this, and she is allowed to enter the convent, where she meets Sister Maria, a French-speaking nun played by Agata Buzek. To go further with the plot would diminish the movie, so I'll stop at that point. Let me just say that the situation is even worse than it seems.This is a movie that is not to be missed. Yes, it's grim, but postwar Poland was a grim place. The film takes place in winter, so snow covers everything, and even the Red Cross staff is miserable. Obviously, for the nuns in the convent, everything is much more terrible.The acting in the film by the two lead actors is outstanding. Also, the ensemble acting was wonderful. There were no weak links, and no obviously staged scenes. Everything looked real--cold, dark, and threatening--but real.This is one of those movies where many frames could be lifted from the film and used as a photograph. My compliments to cinematographer Caroline Champetier, who did a brilliant job.We saw this film at the excellent Little Theatre in Rochester, NY. It will work well enough on the small screen, but the large screen gives you a better sense of the isolation of the convent. The nuns don't expect help from outside. They only expect harm to come to them. Mathilde is the exception, and they (and we) understand that. Small screen or large screen, don't miss this movie!P.S. The film is based on the experiences of a French doctor--Madeleine Jeanne Marie Pauliac. She was a member of the French Resistance, and did, indeed work tirelessly in Poland after the war. For artistic reasons, director Fontaine focused on Dr. Pauliac's work with the pregnant nuns. The rest of her accomplishments would also make a fascinating movie.

The frequent attention that WWII and its consequent problems has received on cinema is suffocating. Les Innocent, however, is one film that goes further, beyond the French Occupation, the megalomaniac character of the first half of 20th century political leaders, the dramatic tales of the Jews, the destruction and radicalism based on nationalisms, and so on. This time is all about a silent, intimate and confronting story developed in a polish convent. The role of woman in the war society has a special attention this time, from two different perspectives: the new free women that can decide her own destiny and find its best metaphor in the French Marianne; the second one, the centenary image of the catholic sacred women, the virgin. These two characters, which embody very well some of the tensions that were deliberated during the world war period, find a perfect justification this time on the dialogues, silences and actions. The polish has been a traditional segregated population and, somehow, this nation has found its historical version on the figure of the European martyr. So, we have an intense, but predictable, argument between these two evocations of a women. Marianne is obviously characterized by a French woman, who is always willing to attend others, who finds its better version on a nurse. Her conflicts end up always with a condescending gesture. She is made to represent the good between an ocean of evil, but with the French usual hostility. But the spectator loses its distance from the world context very easily, because of the intimate voice of the film. The virginal victims are in the middle of a complex scenario, in which violence is expressed on every little action. But this portray of the WWII has a common place that we, the occidental spectators, are very used to. The evil soviets, closer to madness than ever before, carriers of a voluptuous and dark behaviour. At this point, the idea is well exposed: Marianne rescues and supports the oppressed nations, the martyrs, by the horrible and destructive hands of Stalin. One more time, we see the same stereotype on the screen. Nevertheless, it is important to say that beyond this argumentative political line, which is subtly exposed, there are very rich elements that make of this one a remarkable film. Not because of the predictable approach it has, but because of the portray of a very moving case which is worthy to be seen. The photography stablishes a constant dialogue with the interior dramas of the nuns. The sound has a very powerful role, which is complemented with the excellent acting skills of the women. It is poetical when it demands to be.

Poland, immediately after WWII: a highly stressed French Red Cross unit isworking MASH-style to treat and evacuate numerous wounded French soldiers when a desperate Polish nun asks for emergency help. By rule the corpsmen can treat only French military, but by luck and by example the nun moves a young French nurse to break that rule. At the convent she finds that the emergency is that a nun is about to give birth, and with no more help than her sisters' whispered prayers. The subsequent revelations are all convincing and all horrible, especially because the nuns have had to survive--just barely--both the German invaders and their Russian liberators. A.k.a. rapists. This riveting and beautifully filmed story is said to be based on fact. That always makes me want to know more than the 'based on' part. 'Facts are stubborn things,' as John Adams said, to which I add that filmmakers are malleable. They have to make the facts into a story. In this case I felt the wind-up of the story was a high-fructose invention—pat, glib, convenient. Excellent nevertheless.