The Innocents

Director Anne Fontaine's style sometimes feels a touch too elegant for this very dark tale loosely based on an incident that occurred in 1945 Poland, but the underlying story remains compelling. Mathilde (Lou de Laâge), a beautiful French Red Cross nurse, is persuaded by Sister Maria (Agata Buzek) to help a pregnant member of her cloistered community who is in the throes of a painful delivery. Mathilde employs a C-section to save both mother and child, but then learns that there are six other pregnant nuns who were raped by Soviet soldiers when the latter liberated the area from the Nazis, so she repeatedly returns to the convent to tend to them. At the insistence of the stern Mother Superior (Agata Kulesza), however, Mathilde must keep everything secret while families are sought to adopt the children quietly in order to avoid scandal. Mathilde also prevents another assault on the nuns by a Russian squad that she frightens away by pretending that the convent is experiencing a typhoid outbreak. Despite the glossy artiness of Fontaine's widescreen images and a misguided attempt to provide the nurse with a potential romantic interest, The Innocents is an intense, gripping film. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include a “making-of” featurette (18 min.), a Q&A with director Anne Fontaine (15 min.), an interview with Fontaine (11 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for this compelling French drama.] (F. Swietek)