Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

blue-flower-177 An amazing performance, music and cinematography! The film is very deep, absolutely intense emotional experience.

CineMuseFilms Most war films recount history as if women were never involved or their experiences not worth mentioning. That is just one of many reasons why The Innocents (2016) stands out in the war film genre: it is about, for, and made by women. The result is a soulful essay about atrocities committed against a group of nuns during the second world war, portrayed as a complex metaphorical struggle between religious faith, medical science, and evil.The linear plot line is as austere as the film's narrative. We meet a serene and devout convent of Benedictine nuns in Poland who go about their daily prayer with quiet conviction and meticulous adherence to ritual. The serenity is shattered by the scream of a nun about to give birth. One nun fetches a French Red Cross medical intern Mathilde Beaulieu (Lou de Laáge) who sneaks out of the aid mission to help. She learns that Soviet soldiers had raped the nuns and several births were imminent. Mathilde is a non-believer yet is bewildered by the strength of the nun's faith and compelled to help. The nuns believe they are complicit in sin, and some are unable to even submit to medical examination while others do so with deep shame. The tension between sin and evil erupts when the baby is born and Mother Superior takes it out for fostering but instead leaves it in the forest. With more births coming, a convent full of babies cannot survive under Soviet occupation. It is Mathilde who finds an ingenious solution that ensures their survival.Within this narrative arc, there are several strands that explore the nature and practice of faith by a group of women with varied backgrounds and different relationships with their god. Throughout the story, the tension between belief and logic creates a haunting presence. Young Mathilde struggles in a vortex of faith, science and evil, and comes to learn that there are no absolutes. The dystopia of war shatters all, yet faith survives in love and devotion to helping others. She grows emotionally with the experience just as the nun's learn tolerance of those who do not share their faith.While the film has a strong cast of fine performers, it is Lou de Laage who shines brightly in a difficult role. She seamlessly traverses a wide emotional range from inspired awe to resolute determination to help, including restrained romantic explorations with a senior colleague. The portrait-like cinematography conveys the bleak landscape and convent solitude with a sympathetic lens that avoids despair. The film is a tribute not only to the violated nuns but to women of all nationalities mistreated at the hands of military forces. Rape in war continues in modern times, with many nations in denial and others struggling with unresolved shame. This is not an entertaining story, but a dark episode of history on which light has long been needed.

Bob An Initially I gave this film a rating ten, but now I think it is worth nine. Nevertheless, the film is very good.What I liked the best is the setting and the mood of the film. It is quite dark, quite cold ( set in the winter which somehow give something chilly to the already chilly and horrible story) and quite claustophobic ( if I may say that - since the most of the film is done inside a monastery and rooms/cells inside it).The story is gripping and powerful. You can not really stay 'untouched' by the tragedies that the sisters have undergone. And although the scenes were not shown when it happened to them - the scene where it almost happened to the nurse was enough to get the glimpse of what must have been like.The actors were all great - sisters and the nurse especially. I had a bit of a trouble to 'get into' the main doctor's character. I understand French and his way of speaking and making sentences was quite quite strange. But I guess it is meant to be like that.I also liked it was a mix of Polish and French. I know French and Polish is similar in some ways to Serbian so it was also nice to compare some words.I do recommend this film. Though must say that winter time would be more suitable for watching it ( to really get into the atmosphere).

marsanobill 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.