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decalogue-posterThe war was over, but not for the Polish nuns who were persecuted by the Germans and raped by the Russians, who left many of them pregnant in Anne Fontaine’s The Innocents set in 1945 Poland.

This remarkable film is a French/Polish co-production with a female director and cinematographer, supported by other female artisans and crew members. Based on a true story, Lou de Laage plays a fictionalized version of the real female French Red Cross doctor in the country to help wounded French soldiers, who is brought to a remote convent to treat a young girl going through a difficult breach birth. The girl turns out to be a postulant, a nun who has not yet taken her final vows. She is one of seven young nuns who are obviously pregnant. There are other nuns who don’t yet show and in some cases don’t even know they’re pregnant. The mother superior played by Agata Kulesza (the aunt in Ida) is a strict authoritarian who first resists the doctor’s presence, but eventually allows her access, but will not allow her to help her with her advanced case of syphilis from her own rape. The doctor forms a bond with the nun responsible for the postulants, played by Agata Buzek. Together they find a way to save the lives of the innocents, the children who are born of the nuns and immediately removed from the convent by the mother superior who alleges to have placed them with good families, but actually does something far more sinister.

The three leads do exceptional work as do Vincent Macaigne as a Jewish doctor and Anna Prochniak as the most tragic of the postulants. Well received at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and other such venues, the film had a limited run in major cities earlier this year. One of the few really good films released so far this year, this film deserves a much wider audience.

The Innocents is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Criterion has five newly released Blu-ray upgrades that range from the sublime to the ridiculous.

The sublime is Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog, a ten-part made-for-Polish TV series that was first shown at the 1989 Cannes and Venice Film Festivals, winning major awards at the latter. It was shown on Polish TV in December of that year and released theatrically in special venues throughout the world beginning in 1990.

Dekalog AKA The Decalogue is another word for The Ten Commandments. The ten hour-long segments are all set in and around a Warsaw apartment complex. Although each episode is loosely based on one of the commandments, they incorporate aspects of other commandments as well. The opening episode, which is about false gods, sets the tone as it follows the close-knit relationship of a college professor and his young son whose false gods include the modern computer and a pair of shiny new skates. Its focus, as is the focus of all ten, is on love and death.

Best are the emotionally rich fifth and sixth episodes. The fifth follows a disturbed young man who brutally murders a taxi driver and is defended by a young lawyer who is opposed to the death penalty. The sixth follows a young man obsessed with a woman who is at first repelled by him, but warms to him when it is almost too late.

Criterion has done a beautiful job with this one beginning with a restored 4K digital transfer of all ten episodes as well as A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love, which are extended versions of the fifth and sixth episodes described above. Shown separately at Cannes in 1988, A Short Film About Killing walked away with two major prizes and was nominated for a third.

New and archival material is also included.

The ridiculous is a tie between 1967’s Valley of the Dolls and 1970’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. The former is based on Jacqueline Susann’s trashy bestseller and is even trashier than the novel with a ludicrous co-lead performance by the usually great Patty Duke. The latter is a spoof of the former and various other genre films of the era. It has a slightly better reputation because it was the only screenplay written by Roger Ebert. Both films, which are sold separately, have been given pristine 2K restorations but most of the extras are imports from previous DVD releases.

We also get the still harrowing 1942 Val Lewton classic Cat People in a new 2K transfer with previously released extras; and the Coen Brothers first film, Blood Simple, which has been given a stunning 4K transfer and loads of extras including an on-camera interview with Frances McDormand on both the film and the Brothers’ filmmaking process.

Warner Bros. Archive has released a Blu-ray upgrade of Clint Eastwood’s 1997 film of John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which chronicles a real-life murder and its ensuing trial in 1980s Savannah, Ga.

The film stars John Cusack as a young writer who befriends Kevin Spacey, the bon vivant art dealer on trial for the murder of his boy-toy, played by Jude Law. Jack Thompson, Irma P. Hall, Paul Hipp, Allison Eastwood, Kim Hunter, and Dorothy Loudon are featured. The standout in the cast, though, is The Lady Chablis, the legendary drag performer who died last month, who plays herself, stealing every scene she’s in.

Conceived by writer Paul Rutman (Inspector Lewis, Agatha Christie’s Marple, Vera), the series Indian Summers was expected to go on for years exploring the changing times within India but instead has been canceled by the BBC after just two seasons.

The first season was set in 1932. The newly released Indian Summers – Season 2 is set three years later in 1935 with the same principal characters. In truth it’s difficult to see how the series would have continued with the same characters whose story lines were all resolved by the end of this season.

The lead characters in this continuing tale of the waning years of British rule in India are the Secretary to the Viceroy played by Henry-Lloyd Hughes; his abused sister played by Jemima West; her Hindu lover, a loyal employee of her brother by day, a revolutionary by night, played by Nikesh Patel; and the iron-willed matriarchal manager of the local country club, played by Julie Walters.

Both seasons of Indian Summers are available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

This week’s new releases include American Horror Story: Hotel and the Blu-ray release of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.

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