Poland, December 1945. A young French intern working for the Red Cross, Mathilde Beaulieu is responsible for finding French survivors of German camps at the end of WWII and repatriate them. When a Polish nun comes to ask her for help, she agrees to follow her to a Benedictine convent where she and the other nuns live cut off from the world. She then discovers that several of them have become pregnant in dramatic circumstances and are about to give birth…

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The one thing that runs through Anne Fontaine’s varied filmography (Dry Cleaning, Nathalie, The Girl From Monaco, Coco Before Chanel, Adore) is its focus on women. Inspired by a sordid history of rape and murder, Agnus Dei thus finds its place in the work of the director, who tries her hand at costume drama for the first time. Not surprisingly, the weight of the exercise, reflected in the icy atmosphere of the snowy convent, hangs like a lead weight on top of the movie, stifling its raw emotion. The monotonous mise en scène underscores this sentiment while Lou de Laâge, know for her work in Respire by Mélanie Laurent, attempts to breathe some life into her character. Agnus Dei isn’t all bad: it has enough strength and raises enough questions about mankind to interest and intrigue.