At the end when you see her, is she an alien? Does she suddenly get transformed into an alien? And were the children really living in that hospital part, or were they ghosts?
Sorry if these questions seem lame. I found it doubly hard to understand what was happening cos I watched it in Spanish. haha
Your questions are not lame, it is the movie itself that is lame.
She dies. At the end, she is a ghost. The dead baby is also a ghost and all the children around her are ghosts. She becomes like the mother ghost of them all.
It wasn't hard to understand, and it's not you, it's the quality of the story and movie. It was badly conceived and badly made so don't blame yourself for feeling lost. The director himself was lost.
This is such a stupid movie. Complete crap.
and who were supposed to be able to see the ghosts? I think this films is absolutely awful and the story is strange. Whats more, the end of the film creates more confusion. Judith didnt take pills any longer and the she started seeing the ghosts since she just could hear them before. And what happened to all the children? were they killed because there were too many childres due to the second world war? I have so many cuestions. Why did ann die? Because of her child?why did she have such eyes in the end?
shareYou are right, this film is absolutely awful.
The ending is just as awful as everything else in this movie, and you are correct in saying that it creates more confusion. But I'll try to explain. She dies at the end. All those children with her are also dead. The pills kept Judith numb, from seeing all the strange things around her. As for the eyes, it's just a way to show that she's dead. That's how we're supposed to know that she's a ghost. I know what you're thinking, that is so lame and uninspired. But what would you expect from such a crappy movie and an incompetent director?
The director is obviously such an idiot that he can't even come up with anyting creative or original to show that a character is dead, so this is his way of showing they're all zombies. Change the eyes and add some ridiculous vein make-up on the skin. So stupid.
Honestly, I would be so insulted if I were Fulci and Argento and all those other directors that Pascal Laugier tried to copy, but he failed trying.
What's truly scary is that a person that comes up with a story like this must be really *beep* up in real life. Ask yourself what kind of person can come up with this s**t? Answer : someone truly disturbed and maybe even a little psychotic.
I thhink your explanation about the movie is quite correct but it has such susceptibility to be changed by other theories that it is difficult to know if that is what pascal wanted to express. I mean that the film is so confusing that there are a lot of possible combinations .Anyway, thanks for your great help and I expect that Pascal won´t write any (horror) story in the future. Moreover, I cant believe that this film has been translated to so many languages. Was it successful in France?
shareNo not at all, it was a total failure here in France, both with the critics and the public. It came out over a year ago and only lasted two weeks in the cinemas before it disappeared.
You are right, there could be other explanations because I read somewhere that the writer didn't even know the ending himself ! It's very frustrating to watch a movie where the writer admits to not knowing what's going on. That's called cheating and deceiving, and an audience deserves better than that.
I agree with you, I doubt very much that we're going to see another movie from him again. No one will ever work with Pascal Laugier because nobody wants to be associated with a loser.
But I hope that French producers give other more deserving talents a chance to make a real movie. We have great French talents like Alexandre Aja who know how to make good films.
I am absolutely in accordance with you. Here in Spain "EL Internado" (the Spanish title) has also been a true disaster and a lot of people say that French people dont know how to make horror movies. It is clear that that is totally false because it is just a director who doesnt. Unfortunately, many people are used to generalizing. I expect to see a good horror film from a French director in order to forget pascal
shareYes you are exactly right. I'm French and I know we have good talents here and it's a shame when people from other countries have to see a movie like "Saint-Ange" as an example of what our directors can do. Pascal Laugier is an insult to French cinema.
Fortunately for you and for Spain, you can boast about Spanish directors like Alejandro Amenabar, who are very talented and respected internationally. When people talk about directors who make good horror films, Amenabar is often at the top of the list. For us, we have only Alexandre Aja, who is talented and is already working on his second film in Morocco.
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Too many people these days are not happy with ambiguous endings. Western culture says 'but what <i>happened</i>?' and is not content to be left to imagine it on its own. Why do you think wonderful movies such as Ring and Ring 2 had to be changed for the American audiences? They were too ambiguous of course!
This movie is much too subtle for the majority of people. People do not like to be given their own head in such movies. They would rather be lead around by the harness and told exactly what was going on. If you want a movie such as that, rent/buy Stay Alive with all its many inaccuracies and idiocy.
I genuinely enjoyed this movie. It <i>does</i> have some gaping plot holes, but they are not as bad as some! Stay Alive, as previously mentioned, has holes that it is possible to fly an airbus through! It is not entirely inconceivable that the children who arrived during the war were delivered into Nazi hands. You must remember that France was under Nazi control and people ... well, they did many things that today we find reprehensible. Yes, even nuns.
The 'scary children' were most probably Jewish and taken from their families; their mothers and fathers who were being sent to the death camps. The cook says that there were only two doctors and three hundred children <i>but</i> the dumb waiter takes Anna down to a hospital/laboratory that, in its heyday, was fully equipped! There would have been many more doctors down there than the cook is willing to admit. The headmistress also mentions that the cook is attempting to put it behind her.
Someone mentioned that Anna simply hallucinated the entire subterranean laboratory but when the headmistress and her man find Anna, she is, indeed, in the laboratory. The only part that she hallucinated was the trip down. It was definitely not that long.
All in all, if you take the time to simply <i>watch</i> this movie, with no pre-conceived notions it is very good. Lately I have come to watch my horror movies with very low expectations. Too many lead me around by the hand and have simple 'jump out' thrills and yet <i>others</i> simply make no sense whatsoever (Stay Alive, for example).
Agreed. I'm sick of painfully obvious horror stories and to me the true horror in a horror movie is usually psychological. The psychological horror in this movie was Anna's torment at being forced to carry a baby that reminded her of personal horrors. She tried to abort it when she hit herself in the stomach (notice how she threw the stethoscope away in disgust when she heard the baby's heart beat after she struck herself in the stomach?), and I can tell you wrapping your belly with bandages so tight no one can tell you're pregnant is not the act of someone who wants her child to survive and be born.
I think this movie has a fairly simple story at the center-- Anna wanted to be rid of her unborn baby-- the product of rape and torture-- and so after coming to the orphanage (where she probably came just so she could hide her unwed state of shame) she was drawn to a place where the spirits of other unwanted, murdered children lingered-- the basement hospital. She was drawn there because her baby was like those children-- unwanted, and the product of something horrific that she wanted to forget.
During WW2 Jewish children and women were subjected to some truly horrific experimentation-- especially the mentally ill. I suspected the 'scary' children were children who had been rescued from camps at the close of the war, and were the victims of some horrific experiments themselves. They were reminders of some terrible things that took place, like Anna's own baby. There was nothing the orphanage could do to help them, and they were a burdensome, horrific reminder that the orphanage chose to bury. No one could face them. I suspect they were killed in some way. Someone else suggested they were drowned in those tubs, but it seems likely to me they died from neglect-- abandoned and 'buried'. I know one of the experiments that Nazi 'scientists' conducted was to expose children to extreme temperatures-- often twins-- to see what the body could handle. The tubs reminded me of that sort of experimentation. I wondered if the hospital was some imagined hell that existed for the children in their memories, that they could never escape. Anna descended and entered that hell, wanting to dispose of her baby just like they had been disposed of.
The end did confuse me as well, but I actually enjoy speculating on it. The scary children had been trapped in this 'hell', perhaps, but in the end they were gathered around Anna and her infant, all dead together, in the proper part of the orphanage. It seems to me they were freed. But how and why did her death accomplish that?
I notice the people who declare this movie is utter trash really don't have anything to support that statement. I wouldn't call it the greatest movie ever, but if you stop watching everything with expectations of literal exposition, you might find more enjoyment in something like this.
zziegamp:
" Western culture says 'but what <i>happened</i>?' and is not content to be left to imagine it on its own. Why do you think wonderful movies such as Ring and Ring 2 had to be changed for the American audiences? They were too ambiguous of course"!
I am an American living in Italy and I take great offense to your jealousy based bigotry. F*uck yourself. Perhaps,since you liked this movied so well; you and Laugier can get together and make a new flop. ;) Idiot.
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>She dies. At the end, she is a ghost. The dead baby is also a ghost and all the children around her are ghosts. She becomes like the mother ghost of them all.
In response to the above, I find it ironic that this is a woman who dies and then earns the respect of other children ghosts while she herself wanted to kill her own child. The scene after her death, she holds her child lovingly, surrounded by other ghost children, just makes it all more disappointing and pointless to me.
I find it ironic that this is a woman who dies and then earns the respect of other children ghosts while she herself wanted to kill her own child. The scene after her death, she holds her child lovingly, surrounded by other ghost children, just makes it all more disappointing and pointless to me.
ok so I picked this up because it was next to House of Wax at the video store, I watched it, and was wondering what the heck it's supposed to mean. Too much is unexplained. I'm a lover of foreign film (I'm American) but this one just confused me
shareI just picked it up because the Video Jacket said it was along the lines of the the sixth sense and the haunting. It just confused me. lol. I still don't know what happened to the children or why it happened or why the crazy older girl survived. I spent over half the movie in a daze waiting for it to make sense but it never did. So weird.
shareMe too.
I just wished that sombody would've come in the ending with a long long report that tells what the heck is it all supposed to mean detail-by-detail, what happened to those children (I wondered - maybe they were experimenting on them down there? Because they of the ghost look-alikes & all those tanks and white rooms in the ending? ). Why Judith was the only one who survived.
Maybe the woman was just simply haunted ( killing the kittens :| ) and imagined that all herself? But Judith saw it all too... :///
What was the meaning of the words "The one that comes in there, never comes back" Helenka said. Did she know that she won't return from down there?
why was those rooms behind the mirror of the beathroom?
oh, this all is completely dumb dumb dumb ><
I don't speak english very well, but I'll try.
I absolutely don't know why peoples don't understand this movie; it's don't so difficult to understand the story, it's just SUBTLE. If Saint Ange was a Lynch movie, everybody would say it's a masterpiece. Unfortunately, Saint ANge is really a masterpiece.
Pascal Laugier has certainly trust peoples was able to think by themself. But he was wrong...
At first, many people don't understand what happened to children. You must understand it's absolutely not the main plot of the movie; the real story of Saint Ange is the encounter of Anna and the dead children; of a young woman who don't accept her motherhood and children who are orphans for the eternity. Why and how they died is secondary. But there is many clues, just listen the dialogues and watch carefully any details.
The cards Anna found in the wall, by exemple; it's maybe not obvious for a non-french speaker (even for a french speaker, so...), but these cards were used by nazis to notice physical details of Judes. The head master (correct word?) said these cards were in her office, and a kid stoled some of these cards.
So, what can you conclude about what the head master done during the war?
Many don't know why Anna killed the kittens; yet, it's obvious!
I hope you have understanded she doesn't like her baby. She did that for this reason and to do Judith dislike the other woman.
Next: "maybe they were experimenting on them down there? "
Yes! You must understand when Anna come down, she see the labs like it was during the war (like "Shining", when Jack Torrance see the ghosts). It's like "The Haunting", there is a link between the place and the young woman (in Saint Ange, the link is motherhood of Anna).
It's the place the kids suffered, so they are all here.
"Why Judith was the only one who survived."
I don't remember exactly why, but it is explain in the movie. Subtly explain, yet.
"why was those rooms behind the mirror of the beathroom? "
If you dealed with nazis for exeriments during the war, I think you had should hide the laboratory after the war.
And the ending is beautiful; Anna and her bay are dead, but she now likes her baby and she is became the mum of all little children.
"why was those rooms behind the mirror of the beathroom? "
If you dealed with nazis for exeriments during the war, I think you had should hide the laboratory after the war.
So if they leave Anna here, it's maybe because it was just an ancient hospital transformated in laboratory during the war, so if it's decovered by police it's not necessary suspicious because it's was just an hospital. It's no written on the wall "Here was a nazi lab".
The movie has the particularity you can see into it what you want (ghosts or no ghosts), so you can think there is no laboratory.
But for me, many things, clues and details make it's impossible there is no ghosts and no laboratory.
Firt of all I think the movie was too complex and should have used some further explenation.
But here it goes.
It was indeed a nazy experementation camp,
The eyes were a bit a giveaway.
One of the most famous experiments of the nazi s was to make an Ubermensh according to the arian race standards.
Steriotypical the had to be blonde and blue eyes.
There were the experiments of the nazi s to make the eyes of jews and other prisoners blue [most of these experiments failed however using a sort of acid making the eyes the right collor sometimes but ended up making them blind]
Also the whole scene whith the underground daycare if you will.
It was a long way down don t you think hehe, trying to make it a bit more obvious. You won t find these underground labs in just any orphonage etc.
There are so maney other clues but I guess it was clear to most that it was indeed an Nazi lab where experiments were performed.
The parts that I don t understand or to say that I don t know what the clues signify are the ones about the background of the girl.
Especially the one where the old woman lies about the main caracter drowning the kittens.
The problem was the point of view of the film so that it can never realy be sure who killed these kittens.
In one scene the old woman does not know who killed the cats [not the one where she says that she doesn t know but the one where she visits the main caracter where she has no reason to lie and she claimes again that she doesn t know]and in the end she clames Virginy LeDoyen did it.
Must be missing a clue here but even if I am I m quite perceptive in films so I would say that if there was a clue the it was poorly acted out.
The end is a just that she died and joines the children that were victems of the nazi s.
It wasn t a very good movie but I do disagree whith the bad creds the actors received from some comments above.
I gues it is hard to judge acting performances when the movie is bad they all seem to tend to judge the actors more harshly.
So conclusion.
The dead children where victims of nazis and were experimented upon.
Sole survivor was the crazy girl who isn t realy that crazy but medicated to forget her history.
Main character dies in the end from a bad delivery and takes her place amongst the dead children. The acting was good but the script, especialy the ending and the loose ends it kept, made this a bit hard to judge according to some.
Not the best film to say the least cos it is badly directed and some bad choices where made in the script [impossible to say if it was a directors fault or a bad base script but when a director has a bad script a good one will make it work by changing it a bit thats his job so....]
Evil Inc.
The ending was bothced, but it was pretty clear we were looking at the heroine's ghost, now playing mother to the ghosts of the scary children. Wish it had been a better film. It looked great, but that's about all. I too wondered if the kids were being experimented on in the basement lab, but one way or the other, they were victims of the Nazis and doomed.
shareShe definitely becomes the ghost. And the eyes thing could be, in my opinion, the homage to Lucio Fulci.
Catriona MacColl was a star of Fulci's "Beyond". In the end, when she crosses over the hell's gate, her eyes turn white, exactly like it was in "Saint Ange".
It is imposible for Anna to be a heroine nor the mother of the ghost children just becouse she wanted to KILL her baby. Everything was made up on her mind.
"I'm a human being, god damn it! My life has value" Wake up, the revolution is now.
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i like this explanation! it makes sence to me.
shareHer eyes are getting acquainted with all the bright children. The children are not ghosts, they were able to live healthy lives in the basement due to unlimited food supplies, made mainly of rasp. Very nice touch, 10/10!
shareI thought they were zombies, but hey, obviously I don't know anything!
Why was there a nazi experimentation facility in the FRENCH ALPS?
I didn't quite understand that part. The rest is clear if you think about it, but one could also think the children were evil (didn't they seem it?) and that they possessed anna to attempt abortion, and in the end caused the stillborn baby.
I got some major heeby jeebies from watching this, so I have to say it's a good film, leaves room to your imagination, I like that.
how come Judith doesn't remeber anything about the nazi then?
shareWell, now I understand what happened, but I really didn't know until I read it here. I thought the movie was artistically very moving, and sometimes it was a bit frightening, but it definitely could have been better. The acting was okay too, I don't see why everyone says the main actress was so bad, I think she did a great job. This movie gets a 5.5/10 from me...It'd get a 6 if I understood the story, and an 8 if the story had been a little more coherant.
Turn to stone, lose my faith, I'll be gone before it happens.
Ok here goes.
Nothing evil was done to the children at saint ange during the war. The staff are kind people who did their best to save as many children as they could, but there were too many and limited resources, so some of the children died.
Anna arrives to begin working at st ange. She does not want to become a mother and is trying to kill her unborn child. It's hard to blame her. It can't have been easy to find safe abortions in 1958 france.
But anna is also insane, prone to hallucinations and paranoia. She also has a nice rack but that's beside the point.
So she invents a conspiracy involving ghost children, and evil nuns who helped the nazis conduct medical experiments on orphans during the war, and sets herself up as the savior of these children to compensate for her feelings of guilt about killing her fetus, and general reluctance to become a mother.
She enlists the equally insane Marie (name?) in her imaginary crusade, gets her to stop taking the medication she needs, and convinces her that something horrible was done to the children long ago.
btw the episode with Marie and the kittens is a version in miniature of what's happening with Anna and her child. She doesn't want to take care of the kittens so she drowns them, forgets she did it and blames the staff.
Later anna and marie go sneaking around, bust the mirrors in the bathroom and break tino a wing of the orphanage that was shut up because of the bad memories, and BECAUSE THE BOARDS ARE ROTTING AND IT'S UNSAFE.
Anna crawls into what appears to be a coal shute (???) and here's where the hallucination begins. She imagines it to be an elevator that takes her into a secret underground laboratory where zombie/ doctor children who jump up out of womb-like vats of slimy water and resemble fetuses, surround her chanting "mother, mother" and force her to give birth against her wishes.
This part of the movie is a 20-minute hallucination in which Anna succumbs to her feelings of guilt and reluctance to become a mother.
What actually happened is this: She stepped into the coal shute, stepped out into the same room after a few minutes, stumbled around in the dark, pushed out a stillbirth on the floor and died as a result of the physical abuse she has been inflicting on herself for the past month.
The cook and the head nun or whatever find her later and decide to call the police. notice they are not nervous at all, as they should be if they really were concealing horrible secrets in a subterannean dungeon. that was all in Anna and Marie's mind.
Marie is off her meds, so she has a hallucination on the way out of the hospital. She sees what she wants to see, anna has become the mother that her childhood friends never had.
pretty ok movie really. with some hot ladies too : )
Saw it yesterday and I had also several questions unanswerred. I think bringing it down completely for that is unfair. I have seen better ones than this like "The Others" but I don't think it's a bad movie.
Thank you previous posters for that explanations :)
I like it that the movie is open to many interpretations and leaves in that way room for the own imagination.
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Some interesting thoughts but I think you're wrong on several points. The scary children and the lab and etc were not in Anna's mind. That's made obvious by what happens in the orphanage before Anna even arrives. That's the entire point of that segment, to show the audience that something is amiss and wrong with the place before Anna arrives.
I reiterate what I said in another post-- I believe these scary children were delivered to the orphanage from NAZI camps after the war ended. They had suffered experimentation (this is a well-documented fact of WW2, Nazi 'scientists' extensively experimented on children in some horrific ways) and were a horrible reminder of what had taken place during the war, just as Anna's unborn child was a horrible reminder of her own rape and torture. Her baby had a lot in common with those children-- all were unwanted, all were reminders of something evil.
Don't be confused...It's just a fricking *beep* movie, simple.
sharei juz think their eyes were like they're suffering from cataract or something lol
the purpose of eyes were to indicate they died or they had been experimented? i guess it was more likely to be the 1st, if so it was really stupid i should say
to make them looked like ghosts or scarier? i hope they could do better than that
uurrgg,,n wats more ridiculous is the fact that there is no exact summary of the movie on the internet. I just cant understand its facts. I wanna read more about it. i saw the movie two days back on HBO.. and i guess they had edited the movie to be shown on tv.. the only scene that i saw abt the kittens was when she opens the door of the van and finds them in there.. i did nt see any scene where she kills them.. and also the scene where she is deliverin her baby.. they cut of the scene, just when the blood starts appearing on the white floor..the next scene was that the headmistress nd the guy are lookin abt in the lab..was there more to it?
sharePeople , I have nothing of my own to say.
I COMPLETELY ENDORSE WHAT lbodownload SEZ;
Ok Grippe-Sou may have another interpretation (albeit far fetched)
The rest of you cribbers go and watch Tom and Jerry.
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i watched it today year 2022,because i saw it on netflix.
what i understand is the main girl is losing her mind. when she arrives she's a sweet girl. and then we discovered that she's pregnant and was abused by men.she told her secret to her co worker (the old woman) but when she found out that her secret was revealed to the orphange's head she completely change and started to think the old woman lies.she's paranoid. the other girl the one taking medication was in their care.the main drown the kittens. it was not explained but it was told in the end. the old house keeper regrets not doing anything before it got worse.alot think that the house keeper was lying and blaming her about the kittens but it was really the main who killed the kitten, the old woman will always tell her to calm down.that's how people are trying to understand those who are mentally ill.she never hurt or attack her, she was trying to calm her down. she knows because she handled the other girl the one taking medication.
in the end i think her baby died and she died of bleeding because she was punching her stomach a lot.and those children's ghost i don't know if it's real. or it's the other girls imagination because she's mentally ill also or those are the ghost of the previous kids there who felt sad for her because she's abused and gone mad. and that room behind the mirror is an old lab during war i guess.but before she died i think her trauma from her abused made her crazy.i also think the head mistress knows about her pregancy and trauma that's why she brought her there.when she got mad about her secret being revealed she rans to the truck and told them you told my secret and both said we know. it obvious so i guess she was brought there because she's mentally ill because of trauma.she was abused so she don't trust adults.i think this more like a psychological triller.