Drawing on one of the darkest secrets of Irish society -- which might almost be said to be built upon dark secrets -- "The Magdalene Sisters" is a rip-roaring feminist yarn that should offer relief to viewers anxious for an alternative to the boys-with-guns flicks of summer. This drama about the girls and women incarcerated in a convent laundry has the advantage of historical veracity, and it provides a useful object lesson in what can happen when an entire nation becomes hypnotized by one particular vision of religious virtue.
What really matters, though, is that writer-director Peter Mullan has crafted a classic crowd-pleaser, a neo-Gothic tale whose appealing heroines are unfairly oppressed but finally find the strength to set themselves free. With its nearly all-female cast and its story of a community of women poisoned and embittered by an atmosphere of sexual hostility (with a dash of lesbian sadism thrown in), "The Magdalene Sisters" will seem slightly familiar to any connoisseur of trashy genre films. (I'm not saying that's what it is, at least not exactly.) Basically, we're talking women-in-prison message movie, with the added touch that the prisoners aren't guilty of anything -- except being women.