The Magdalene Sisters

By PETER CALDER

A film of compelling, incendiary anger, harrowing and grim, this is also often grimly funny. It's also, at moments, a film of unassuming mastery.

That mastery is on show from the opening scene: Mullan observes an Irish wedding feast at which Margaret (Duff) is lured into a back room and raped by her cousin. As the news spreads through the room, the soundtrack blares with a jaunty reel from the band. We follow the aftermath without being able - or needing - to hear a word of what is spoken.

It is an impeccably edited scene of magisterial control which showcases a special talent. Throughout the film, Mullan shows us he's an actor's director, but these first moments are pure cinema.

As punishment for the shame she has brought on the family, Margaret is shipped off to one of the Magdalene asylums. In these convents, named after the Bible's most famous sinner, the Sisters of Mercy provide fallen women with what the martinet superintendent, Sister Bridget (the deliciously malevolent McEwan) calls "an earthly way to cleanse your souls".

Among Margaret's fellow inmates is Bernadette (Noone), an orphan whose dark-eyed beauty has been deemed dangerous to the boys, and two unwed mothers (Duffy and Walsh). Prisoners and slaves, the women toil endlessly in laundries, earning money they never see.

Meanwhile, they are brutalised by the nuns - a scene in which they stand naked before their sneering overseers is deliberately and uncomfortably reminiscent of a concentration camp - and even by the families who have abandoned them (Mullan himself puts in a powerful cameo as a father dragging his daughter back after she has run home).

Mullan shoots in commendably unadorned fashion: the camera is either handheld or on a tripod, and the actors, without the demands of complicated tracking shots, are freed up to turn in some heartfelt work.

He is not beyond leavening the mix with some of the bleak humour we associate with all prison films, but crucially he never flinches when he ought not.

When one of the girls takes revenge on a sexually predatory priest by putting nettles in his underwear, the priest strips naked and bounds off across the fields, yelping. It might have been a moment of high farce, but Mullan won't let us laugh.

As the nuns squirm, one of his victims calls after him, over and over: "You are not a man of God." The camera moves in as she keeps repeating it. The scene feels endless and we squirm too.

Mullan, who leaves us in no doubt about his attitude, has crafted a film of great power, which is not an easy watch.

But it's worth noting that it avoids all the easy platitudes and even a cheaply upbeat ending. He plainly believes too much in what he's doing to take - or allow us - such an easy way out.

Cast: Geraldine McEwan, Annie-Marie Duff, Dorothy Duffy, Eileen Walsh, Nora-Jane Noone Director: Peter Mullan Running time: 114 mins Rating: R16 (content may disturb) Screening: Advance screenings this weekend at Rialto, Newmarket. Opens Rialto, Bridgeway, on Thursday