In the winter of 1945, Mathilde Beaulieu (Lou de Laâge), a beautiful Red Cross medic-in-training, is stationed in Poland when she is approached by a comely young nun. She follows the sister to her artfully distressed convent to assist in a breech birth.
When Mathilde returns the following day, to check up on the new mother, she discovers – after some snooping – that at least seven of the nuns are pregnant having being raped by Soviet soldiers. Mathilde wishes to help but the Mother Superior (Ida's Agata Kulesza) is most reluctant. The traumatised nuns, too, make for uneasy patients.
Mathilde's colleagues, in particular her doctor-lover Samuel (Eden's Vincent Macaigne), are annoyed by her disappearances but the order has sworn her to secrecy. An ensemble of terrific actors bring credibility to this sleek historical drama. That is just as well.
Despite handsome technical specs, restrained direction from Anne Fontaine and a plot inspired by historical events – there was, indeed, a second World War, and there was a medic (named Madeleine Pauliac) on which Mathilde is based – The Innocents looks and feels like a pretty companion piece for the same filmmaker's Coco Before Chanel, not a war movie.
All of the prepossessing nuns look as if they might – in tribute to Van Halen's Hot For Teacher video – rip off their wimples to reveal cascading locks and bikinis.
Whither the horrors of war in the Joanna Macha’s picture-perfect production design and Katarzyna Lewinska’s elegant costumes? Everyone, even in the operating theatre, is pristinely presented, with white teeth and military gear that could well feature in Stella McCartney’s next collection.
Caroline Champetier’s beautiful, minimalist lensing repeatedly shies away from blood and incident. Every drama and conflict is quickly, near magically, resolved.
A potential ideological stand-off between the nun's spirituality and the Communist-raised Mathilde's practicality is fluffed. Happy, clappy final scenes suggest that everyone on screen will burst into a karaoke chorus of The Sound of Music as the final credits roll.
A dishonest denouement for a dishonest film. Stops just short of promising to build a magnificent, beautiful, high wall along the Mexican border.
