A Movie is a Vocation: Anne Fontaine on "The Innocents" | Interviews

It's a cast of almost all women. And there you are, a woman directing a cast of almost all women, which is still somewhat unusual in the world of film.

And for the story, it was necessary! It was a story about women—but there is also the Jewish French doctor [Vincent Macaigne], who brings lightness and irony into the story. Thirty nuns, one French young doctor: it's their secret ... The movie is about positive transgression: the nun at the beginning decided to go through the forest to find some help. She hasn't told anyone, "Now I'm going to go out." It's a rule in this monastery at this moment, in 1945. It was tougher than today, I think.

And it was unsafe outside the walls.

It was in the middle of the forest, and they were afraid that if somebody knew, they would be killed. They will be shamed for life. The Mother Superior thinks that she's protecting them—in a bad way, but she thinks that she has to be completely closed. 

A kind of fundamentalism.

Exactly. It exists, it has existed, and it exists in other religions, of course. 

Were there any other films you were thinking about while you were making this one?

I showed my DP three or four movies, very different ones. “Thérèse,” by Alain Cavalier, for the lights, for the simplicity of the way the faces are lighted. It's a very beautiful and moving movie. Also Bresson's “Angels of Sin.” And Jane Campion movies, for the Romanesque. I've seen “Ida,” more because the actress I had [Agata Kulesza] came from it. Another movie—very, very famous in France, I don't know if you know it here: “Des hommes et des dieux” (“Of Gods and Men”), a story about monks that are killed. I watched religious movies to see what I liked, what I didn't like. It's a mixture of many things when I prepare a movie. 

I was thinking of “Into Great Silence.”

The documentary, yes. “Le grand silence.” I have seen it. It's not cinematographic, but it's the ritual: beautiful, because it's very simple, very natural.

It makes you feel contemplative.

Yes. I tried in my movie to be contemplative, but also dramatic. With attention to the inside. It's important to feel true in these moments, because you can fight against violence when you sing, when you pray. It's the way they fight against what happened.