Venice

The Magdalene Sisters

 (U.K.)

'The Magdalene Sisters,' Peter Mullan's first film since 1997's 'Orphans,' looks at the harsh life of Irish girls in a convent.

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Named for the mother of all repentant sinners, Mary Magdalene, and run by the Sisters of Mercy in Ireland, the Magdalene convents now seem almost medieval in their cruelty but remained widely operational through the 1970s. An estimated 30,000 women were detained before closure of the remaining institutions in 1996.

Functioning as prisons, they housed "fallen women," committed by their families or parish priests, whose transgressions ran from becoming pregnant out of wedlock -- the offspring given up for adoption -- to engaging in harmless flirtation. Sentenced indefinitely, the women worked unpaid seven days a week doing laundry to wash away the sins of the flesh, enduring psychological and physical torment, humiliation and total isolation from the outside world.

Establishing a narrative economy that conveys information with spare dialogue and succinct coverage, Mullan's penetrating screenplay -- set in Dublin County in 1964 -- backgrounds three principal characters in an illuminating pretitles sequence:

At a family wedding, Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) is raped by her cousin. After confessing to her friend, the information travels through her relatives, unheard beneath the cheerful din of party music. Margaret is packed off next morning without explanation.

A sassy, good-looking girl, Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone) attracts attention from local boys who hang around the fences of her orphanage home, branding her a temptress and a bad influence.

Unmarried Rose (Dorothy Duffy) gives birth to a son and a manipulative priest persuades her to offer the child a better life.

The three's entry into the convent occasions the introduction of a memorable character -- as monstrous as she is misguided -- in Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan), a truly malevolent force convinced she is performing God's work. She brutally intimidates and belittles the girls while outlining the life of work and prayer ahead.

The drama's other key figure is Crispina (Eileen Walsh), a feeble-minded girl whose only comfort is a Saint Christopher medal she uses as a "holy telephone" to talk to the son taken from her.

As the harshness of their situation sinks in, Margaret and Bernadette ponder escape. They are discouraged initially when one runaway (Mary Murray) is dragged back and savagely beaten by her unforgiving father (Mullan in a fierce cameo). The girl's hair is shorn by Sister Bridget in the twisted belief she can strip away vanity and force her charges to dredge their souls for salvation.

Some inmates buy into the dogma while others, like Bernadette, are hardened by the experience.

The same streak of pitch-black humor that distinguished Mullan's "Orphans" colors several scenes, including a bizarrely creepy bout of sexual humiliation as two nuns taunt the naked girls.

The spiral of injustices visited upon the girls fuels Bernadette's hatred of the nuns and her resolve to escape. After Rose is viciously beaten for a misdemeanor, Bernadette convinces the girl to break out with her. Their resulting face-off with Sister Bridget and the other nuns functions like an exhilarating action finale before segueing to a more sober conclusion in which the key characters' outcomes are revealed.

Principally inspired by the Channel 4 docy "Sex in a Cold Climate," the film was based on extensive research and video testimony from women who underwent the experience. Relating the drama in scenes pared back to the essential, Mullan's increased maturity as a director is evident in his skill at manipulating light and dark dramatic tones, and shifting between moods of anger and plaintive melancholy.

Performances are uniformly strong, led by McEwan's contradictory marriage of spitefulness, piety, arch superiority and doddering confusion. The accomplished stage veteran quietly reveals Sister Bridget's rare moments of doubt. The nun's even rarer displays of levity prompt uneasiness and a sense of what the woman might have become in other circumstances.

Of the girls, Walsh makes Crispina a heartbreakingly pathetic figure while newcomer Noone is remarkable as Bernadette, giving the savvy girl toughness, determination, a steely exterior and a wounded core.

Mullan's visual sense has been considerably refined. Adopting washed-out, undersaturated colors, d.p. Nigel Willoughby shoots the more violent conflicts in close in a panicked, hand-held style. At other times, he makes atmospheric compositional use of the convent's rigid, symmetrical structures to convey the harsh austerity of the place. Keen, sparing use is made of Craig Armstrong's powerful dramatic score.

Camera (color), Nigel Willoughby; editor, Colin Monie; music, Craig Armstrong; production designer, Mark Leese; art directors, Jean Kerr, Caroline Grebbell; costume designer, Trisha Biggar; sound (Dolby Digital), Colin Nicholson; line producer, Paddy Higson; assistant director, David Gilchrist; casting, Lenny Mullan. Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (competing), Aug. 29, 2002. (Also in Toronto, New York film festivals.) Running time: 119 MIN.
 

With: Phyllis McMahon, Rebecca Walsh, Eamonn Owens, Chris Simpson, Sean Colgan, Daniel Costello.