Hani Mustafa watches the winner of this year's Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival If the title of this film gives some idea of its content it is only in the most indirect way. For Scottish director Peter Mullan clearly sets out to expose the more extreme elements of Irish society in the 1960s, lampooning both repressive family relations and the influence of the Catholic Church. Once the film won the Golden Lion at the 59th Venice Film Festival the result was inevitable: the Vatican launched its own PR offensive, insisting that the film's images of Catholic priests were unfair. The Magdalene Sisters begins with an Irish melody sung by a young boy at a wedding. The wedding party recedes and the name Margaret appears on screen; hers is the first story. The camera records Margaret's rape by her cousin who has taken her into a room ostensibly to show her something, cut with scenes of the wedding party proper. Margaret, we realise, a little later, has been sent away from home, though quite where she has been sent to only becomes clear when the two other stories that make up Mullan's film are introduced. Bernadette lives in an orphanage. The director of the orphanage notices her familiarity with local boys and decides to send her off to a convent. We are introduced to Rose in a hospital, cradling a new born child in her arms. By the bedside Rose's mother stands, refusing to look at either the baby, which has been born out of wedlock, or her daughter. And then Rose's father announces that she is to be sent to a convent, and the child to an orphanage. The baby is torn away from its mother. Only then are the titles screened. Behind the desk of the mother superior of the Magdalene Convent is a portrait of John Kennedy. Shot in low resolution, pale colour, the film contrives its period. After the three introductory segments the film -- scripted by the director -- opts for a conventional narrative form as it sets about exposing the hardships the three girls face. On arrival the mother superior hands each of the girls a letter, informing them that they will serve the convent in order to make up for past sins, though quite how long the atonement will take is unclear. There are some very old servants still working. Life in the convent resembles a far from enlightened prison regime, and the girls spend a great deal of time fantasising about escape. Margaret rises in the middle of the night, dresses in anticipation of running away, when another girl is pushed into the dormitory by a man who beats her savagely with his belt, mother superior in tow. Later Bernadette walks into the head nun's office to find her shaving off the runaway girl's hair, foreshadowing her own punishment when, at a later stage, she enlists the help of a delivery boy in engineering her own failed escape. Crispina is another of the convent's unfortunate inhabitants: mentally retarded, she attempts to commit suicide by wearing a wet nightgown in the hope of catching influenza. When Margaret explains to her that influenza only kills the very old she tries to hang herself with a bed sheet. Crispina's story turns ever more dramatic when she begins an affair with a monk, though here at least there is an opportunity for some laughter when Margaret conceals stinging nettles in the clothing the monk is to wear while making a speech at a village celebration. He starts itching unbearably, and takes off his clothes piece by piece until he is running around stark naked. Hysterically, Crispina tells the mother superior that she too has a similar rash, lifting up her dress to reveal the affliction. The scandal leads to Crispina's removal to an asylum for the mentally ill. Margaret is released from the convent following the request of her brother, which the archbishop approves. This leaves Rose and Bernadette plotting an escape. The girls search for the keys of the convent at night but are discovered, though they do manage to escape to the village. The film then attempts to tie up its numerous dangling threads by providing a précis of the girls post- convent lives. The success of The Magdalene Sisters at the Venice Film Festival follows Jafar Panahi's The Circle, which took the Golden Lion in 2000. The success of Panahi's film, which dealt with Iranian prostitutes, clearly signified the Festival's interest in the issue of human, and particularly, women's rights in conservative societies. The interest continues, which will please human rights activists, perhaps more than film critics.
