A sweeping, well-wrought melodrama of the old school, director Anne Fontaine’s film is set in and around a Polish convent in December 1945. A young French doctor with the Red Cross (Lou de Laâge) attempts to help a group of nuns who are pregnant following repeated rapes by soldiers of the Soviet Red Army.
Agata Kulesza, so good in “Ida,” here plays a Mother Superior tormented by the choices confronting her. A marvelous Agata Buzek, as a former sophisticate who is now the wisest of the nuns, is the script’s true heroine.
The actors bring emotional authenticity to the aftermath of trauma, but despite that and the handsome cinematography, there is also a persistent phoniness. It is based on a true story, but Fontaine can’t resist the desire to bend catastrophe to a slightly more pleasing shape.