You might have seen this story on Dateline or something like 10 years ago. Nuns in Ireland ran these convents like concentration camps and years later the women told their stories. This is a dramatization of 3 of those told in the form of 3 friend/ co- inmates circa the late 60's.
Much like in muslim countries today, women in quasi theocratic Ireland had it bad. If you were unfortunate enough to be raped, got pregnant out of wedlock or just appeared to be interested in the opposite sex (much less the same sex) they hauled you off to one of these places where you did laundry all day. They never said who's laundry it was, but it was like everyone in the whole worlds laundry. It kind of reminded me of the Shaolin Temple in "The Master Killer" when Sante first gets to there, but they don't even get to learn kung fu. So it sucked.
The most noticable flaw at first is the low budget. People lionize low budget films particularly when they are overtly substantial like this one but it can mean not fun stuff like poor lighting and boring camerwork. This isn't a Bergman art house experience with wide shots of meadows or shadows or anything, though there was one really good shot of a girls eyeball where you could see the nun yelling at her's reflection in it! Your instinct particularly if you are photographer may be to turn up the brightness.
Big truth telling movies about dark pasts have other pitfalls too. German movies for example, not just ones about the holocaust, sometimes are so obsessed with the domestic significance of things they forget they are making a piece of entertainment and you end up with basically a wikipedia entry on a subject. I would NOT put this movie in that catagory. It appears to have been created at least somewhat for international consumption in addition to being a labor of love type thing.
At any rate, I really liked the movie. It obviously took pains to be factual, but there were unexpected choices in the script. It was often dark and unflinching, particularly in the case of the one girl Crispina (is that a real name?) Every scene she is in is completely torturous. Even when she is just standing there you know something bad is eventually going to happen to her, it's just a matter of when. She is like a symbol of how horrible the world is and how innocent these kids were.
If you are in the mood for something that is 2 hours long and kind of depressing but also really absorbing and an experience not just a thing on the screen watch it. The one girl who doesn't give a s**t is awesome and hot.
5/5
