Movie Reviews #32…
The Innocents. Anne Fontaine, dir. This is one of those movies where you see the worst in humanity and also the best. It has violence, but it’s mostly a noir history of women as victims of men inspired by Red Cross doctor Madeleine Pauliac’s war memories.
A young female French intern Mathilde (Lou de Laâge), working with the Red Cross in Poland in December 1945 as World War Two is drawing to a close, is asked to help deliver some babies in a convent. It turns out the Nazis went through there three times raping the nuns. Many struggle even to accept the doctor’s help, who has promised not to divulge their secret. The Mother Superior takes the newborns and…well, that’s her secret. The French woman’s boss Samuel, who’s also Mathilde’s lover (workplace romances are always trouble) ends up helping too.
Samuel has the best two lines in the movie when he meets the Mother Superior for the first time: “Yes, I’m Jewish. There are still some of us left.” (This isn’t from the subtitle—by this point I was remembering a lot of my French.) The actors don’t have many notable lines, though, because so much is said via facial expressions and other body language, where they give some understated but masterful performances. Watch for the Mother Superior’s confession at the end, though, although her face telegraphs the words too.
There are graphic scenes in the French field ER and during the births at the convent—not for the squeamish. The languages are French and Polish with good subtitles (first time I’ve seen the subtitlist recognized, but this is a European film). This movie should do well in the foreign film categories—it’s dark and broodin and much better than your average summer fare. It definitely leaves a lasting impression.
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