Synopsis
The Magdalene Sisters (2002) is Peter Mullan's historical drama, available to watch online on iFILM. In 1960s Ireland, three young women are handed over by their families and the Church to a convent laundry, where nuns set out to scrub the sin out of them through punishing labor.
Each girl's crime sounds absurd once you hear it. Margaret spoke up after a cousin raped her. Bernadette only flirted too freely with boys at her orphanage. Rose had a baby out of wedlock and watched it taken away. Behind the gate waits endless washing, near-starvation, beatings, and Sister Bridget, who locks the money the girls earn into her own safe. Escape is almost impossible, and no release date is ever named. Anne-Marie Duff, Nora-Jane Noone and Dorothy Duffy play the three, with Geraldine McEwan as the mother superior smiling through the cruelty.
Mullan reconstructs what these places quietly did for decades under a mask of piety; Ireland's last such laundry didn't shut until 1996. The film took the top prize at Venice, the Golden Lion, and drew open fury from the Vatican. It's a hard sit, and it should be. Stream The Magdalene Sisters (2002) online on iFILM.
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