Critic Reviews

A gripping psychological drama based on events more than half a century old, it has inescapable contemporary echoes. Laced with intensely emotional situations, it refuses to force the issue by pushing too hard. And it proves, yet again, that though moral and spiritual questions may not sound spellbinding they often provide the most absorbing movie experiences.

As much a film about crises of faith as it is the powerful friendships between women, The Innocents steadily unfolds over its nearly 120-minute runtime, revealing new secrets and new surprises (most of them, but not all, appropriately gut-wrenching) at every turn.

Blistering.

Fontaine and cinematographer Caroline Champetier create many subdued and unexpected moments of simple humanity, or of what a more generous Catholic than the Mother Superior might call grace.

Fontaine powerfully conveys the religious women’s inner torment, but with restraint, both visually and verbally.

The Innocents is a powerful, brave film that will stay with you for days.

Shot in artful, quiet light (many of the frames look like elegant paintings), The Innocents is beautifully performed by its nearly all-female cast; each nun, even those unnamed, is given her own personality and story.

Hope and horror are commingled to quietly moving effect in Agnus Dei, a restrained but cumulatively powerful French-Polish drama about the various crises of faith that emerge when a house of God is ravaged by war.

Where "Ida" takes a drearier, more realistic approach to the story, The Innocents, despite its dark focus on a group of women living in fear of getting repeatedly raped by their allies, actually has a mightier finish, something of a crescendo to cut through the quiet grief.

It’s an emotionally involving rather than harrowing film, with scenes as beautiful as oil paintings.