[The Patriot]

Review: 'An indescribable nightmare' leads to a crisis of faith in 'The Innocents'

08-01-2016 01:00 PM

Set in wintry 1945 Warsaw and based on true incidents, Anne Fontaine's "The Innocents" is a moving study of what happens to the faithful when God's plan suddenly seems impossible to follow. In its early scenes, a young French Red Cross doctor named Mathilde (Lou de Laage) is summoned to a rural convent after a frantic nun, Sister Maria (Agata Buzek), pleads with her for help. Upon arriving, Mathilde finds a nun in painful labor -- and others in advanced pregnancy. They have endured, explains one haltingly, "an indescribable nightmare," after a horrific Red Army occupation of the convent some months earlier.


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