The Magdalene Sisters (2002)
Directed by Peter Mullan
Three young Irish women struggle to maintain their spirits while they endure dehumanizing abuse as inmates of a Magdalene Sisters Asylum.
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Following the story of three composite girls (mother out of wedlock Rose (Dorothy Duffy); too-flirtatious Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone); and Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff), raped by a cousin at a wedding), the picture is something of a boot camp drama--complete with dressings-down and sadistic drilling--grafted to a concentration camp melodrama culminating in an involuntary shearing that finds Mullan indulging in a distracting nod to Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc.
The Magdalene Sisters is a horror movie—in some ways it reminds me of Peter Walker's widely reviled English shockers House of Whipcord (1973) and Frightmare (1974), which examined the demonic energy released when the religiously repressed ran straight into the sexual revolution.
Once at the asylum, the girls come under the vicious humiliation of Sister Bridget, played in a brilliant bit of casting by Geraldine McEwan, the sweet, cheeky woman from Kenneth Branagh's Henry V and Peter Chan's The Love Letter.
Later, Sr. Bridget (Geraldine McEwan), the sadistic nun in charge of the asylum — whom even favorable reviews routinely compare with the infamous Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — smilingly confesses a lifelong love of cinema.
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Almost cartoonish in her spitefulness, her most astonishing moment comes on a Christmas day, when she gives the girls a "present," in the form of a film, namely, The Bells of St. Mary's.
Not since Jennifer Jason Leigh wailed her way through that nine-minute "Take Me Back" in Georgia has a scene marshaled so much force out of simple repetition.
Geraldine McEwan, best known for her title performance in the 1978 television mini-series, "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie", gives an award-deserving performance with her portrayal of the malevolent matron, Sister Bridget.
He unfortunately drops the ball at the very end by using the old Animal House "where are they now?" title cards, but such a device is a small quibble.
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Scottish actor-director Peter Mullan, best known as the titular alcoholic in Ken Loach's My Name Is Joe, based this film on the true stories of young women locked away in the Magdalene asylums of Britain and Ireland, ostensibly to cure them of their wanton ways but more pointedly to hide them from their wanton Catholic kin.
An actor himself ("Trainspotting," "My Name is Joe"), Mullan encourages uniformly strong performances from his wonderful cast in roles that must have been physically and psychologically challenging.
Peter Mullan made his name starring in Ken Loach's "My Name is Joe", but his talents extend far beyond acting.
Mullan, who splits his time between directing and acting (he starred in the 1998 drama "My Name Is Joe"), gets solid performances from the newcomers.
In his second feature film, actor Peter Mullan (My Name Is Joe) has created an unflinching and compelling drama that will make your blood boil.
“Magdalene” is the latest directorial effort from actor Peter Mullan, and it plays exactly as brutal as the actor’s typical performances (“My Name Is Joe,” “The Claim,” “Miss Julie“).
And Eileen Walsh as Crispina, the toothy, na�ve girl who slings the most wildly between inexplicable optimism and depthless misery, survives all of the script's demands with a tricky talent that blows the entire cast of Girl, Interrupted right out of the water.