The Magdalene Sisters

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Film Description

Set in Ireland in the mid-sixties, a restrained but powerful indictment of the bullying, repressive regime of a Magdalene Laundry, where girls were sent for the 'sins' of being raped or simply flirtation. Exceptional performances throughout. Winner of the Golden Lion at Venice 2002.

Film Information

DVD Extras

Commentary by director Peter Mullan; Two shorts: Peter Mullan's Award Winning 'Fridge' and 'Close'; Cast audition footage; Audio descriptive track; Trailers

Technical Details

Film Media

1 Trailer

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Review by Mike McCahill on 5th August 2003

Ireland, 1964: three young women are sent to a Magdalene asylum for those who have fallen foul of strict Catholic teaching. Smart girl Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) was raped by her cousin; fragile Rose (Dorothy Duffy) had a baby out of wedlock and snatched away from her; and feisty Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone) is sent off simply for being a bit of a tease. Awaiting them, a harsh asylum regime which dictates the girls work long shifts in the laundry on near-empty stomachs, supervised by nuns cloaking their self-interest and old lags whose minds have become so addled by the starch they wouldn’t even think of creasing them with sin.


Writer-director Peter Mullan’s last film, the grossly mistreated Orphans, was one of the best British debut films of recent years, a long voyage into a dark night stained with blood and sweat and tears. The Magdalene Sisters is, if we are to be as strict as the Catholic elders here, a period piece, and as such, could quite easily have fallen into TV movie territory, but it’s those special ingredients Mullan carries over from his debut which makes this latest film such an authentic experience.


Early on, laundry veteran Crispina (Eileen Walsh) proudly tells Bernadette she’s a whizz at removing blood from sheets with the help of a little cold water and salt, and it often seems as though Mullan, too, is carrying round a pocketful of grit to sprinkle on his movie whenever the scenery starts to look too picturesque or the suffering becomes overly familiar. The camaraderie between the sisters keeps manifesting itself in funny-barbed pranks, which keep the focus on the characters and their spirit rather than any sustained torment; fiddling priests in the vicinity of poison ivy and the alert minds of teenage girls will find one sequence especially uncomfortable to sit through.


As in his first film, Mullan appears to be working out “problems with God”. In Orphans, the abiding line of inquiry appeared to be “if He’s so good, why does He let our loved ones die?”; here, it’s more along the lines of “if He’s so great, why are some of the priests and nuns He appointed to run things down here such bozos?” By and large, though, the film forsakes cloistered austerity for a more flesh-and-blood investigation of human temptation. The nuns in charge of the asylum – led by Geraldine McEwan’s ferocious Sister Bentley – are fallible rather than pecking psychotic penguins, motivated by (variously) avarice, greed and lust, and eventually undone by sheltered old age in the face of passionate, defiant youth.


Despite the furore the film caused in the Vatican, Mullan ensures The Magdalene Sisters never denounces Catholicism entirely. (A postscript informs us several of the real-life Margarets, Roses and Bernadettes remained true to their faith on leaving the asylums.) He is angry, though, about the abuses of power Catholicism (indeed, any religion) begets, and the way religion and faith are often used to justify all manner of atrocities and to cover a multitude of sins, a theme that’s always relevant but especially liable to ring bells amongst its audience, given the recent history of the world.


Somewhere along the line, someone must have realized how this sort of material could very easily be shaped to fit the template of a women-in-prison movie, as Mullan laces events with elements that are just contentious enough to remain eye-catching without ever quite heading into outright exploitation territory. The economic pre-credits sequence offers a brief but telling run-through of the “crimes” the girls are supposed to have committed before locking them behind convent walls; there, the shearing of Bernadette is shot like Driller Killer-era Abel Ferrara, Mullan’s wobbly, hand-held camera offering suggestion of a trauma far worse than we can derive from the few trickles of blood passing over the character’s face.


Contentious all this may be, but these elements put the emphasis back where it should be: on these women’s faces, their bodies, their lasting scars, testament to both suffering and endurance. In this respect, the director is helped by universally laudable performances, but especially by those of the three leads. Movies in the Angela’s Ashes tradition of Irish-Catholic suffering tend to go for broke on the grim, resulting in an enforced visual poverty; Mullan’s deeply humane approach to filmmaking counters all this with the flash of defiance in a teenage eye, and the beauty of a young girl’s smile.

View more reviews by Mike McCahill

Review by Matt Buckland on 1st August 2003

In his portrayal of the Magdalene Laundries, Peter Mullen has created an angry and provocative attack on the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church in Ireland. The film tells the story of three Dublin women in the mid-sixties, each of whom is incarcerated in the convent for their perceived “wayward” lives.



Inside the walls of their religious prison, the girls try to explain they don't belong there. The wizened overseer, Sister Bridget, counting cash while speaking of sin and redemption, promptly puts them in their place. With a fearsome gaze, a quick intelligence and gleeful fondness for sadism, she's both fun to watch and horrible to imagine.



Mullen is a first rate method actor and pushes all his cast to the same level of intensity. There are standout performances from Nora-Jane Noone and Geraldine McEwan in particular. Noone as Bernadette, who emerges as the de facto heroine of the piece, instantly discerns what the more pious girls do not, that maintaining her sanity is a higher obligation than surrendering to the fanaticism of the nuns.



This film explicitly illustrates the ill treatment of the girls in the care of the Magdalene Laundries. They are subjected to a daily litany of humiliation, exhaustive overwork and expressions of disgust for all things sexual and female, with the exception of the Virgin Mary.
The film is a scathing and heartfelt attack on religious hypocrisy, mixing melodrama and black humour in a volatile blend. It is a fitting eulogy to the church-sponsored barbarism now confined to history.

View more reviews by Matt Buckland

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Article - "What You Find: Hidden Gems on DVD" by Graeme Hobbs
Friday 5th November 2004

DVD Extras aren't all about dubious 'featurettes' and photo galleries and theatrical trailers. Now and again the format has given the opportunity to release some exceptional features - often early short films by the director or really worthwhile documentaries. Here a...  View article in full

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