Cinema as a whole shouldn’t have taken this long to depict the women’s side of war.
What it's about
Warsaw, Poland, December 1945. Serving with an army unit, young French Red Cross doctor, Mathilde Beaulieu roams the country to help survivors of World War II, eventually meeting a group of Benedictine nuns who require her help.
The take
When depicting war and faith, it seems like men are the only ones that have to undertake these challenges, at least it seems, in the stories made available about these topics. But that simply isn’t true. The Innocents is one of the few reminders that, while women might have been kept from the front lines, war has spared no one. Through stark and wintry shots, and a solemn direction, writer-director Anne Fontaine crafts tense conversations between an atheist doctor and her nun patients, making all of them reckon with the ways trauma has shifted their present principles and future actions, in a sensitive way that has rarely been seen before. While the resolution can come across as a bit too sudden, The Innocents nonetheless is a compelling study of faith.
What stands out
This wouldn’t have worked if it weren’t for the excellent cast and nuanced characterization made possible by having women on the helm.