THE WILD BUNCH
A group of Catholic schoolgirls take off for a hedonistic trip to Edinburgh in this brilliantly bawdy Nineties-set comedy
OUR LADIES (15) ★★★★I REVIEWS BY DAMON SMITH
IN ONE of the era-perfect songs that accompany director Michael CatonJones’ raucous rites-of-passage comedy, Edinburgh-born singer-songwriter Edwyn Collins croons, “I’ve never known a girl like you before”.
We seldom meet girls like the brazen, potty-mouthed and authorityflouting lead characters in Our Ladies, a film version of
Alan Warner’s awardwinning 1998 novel The Sopranos, which was previously adapted for the stage by Lee Hall as Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour.
Set in 1996 (“before social media and mobile phones changed everything”), Caton-Jones’ picture witnesses the emotional devastation wrought by Catholic schoolgirls as they unapologetically cross the rubicon to womanhood and interrogate their sexual identities with vigour.
A cast of relative unknowns led by Tallulah Greive as teenage narrator Orla embody the titular sisters of no mercy with vim and aching vulnerability, fostering winning screen chemistry that shows with an end credits singalong.
“It was springtime and we had one thing on our minds: boys,” coos hormone-crazed schoolgirl Orla in voiceover.
She is in recovery from acute lymphoblastic leukaemia after a “miracle” visit to Lourdes and yearns to savour her teenage years in Fort William.
Orla joins salty-mouthed classmates Chell (Rona Morison), Finnoula (Tin Star’s Abigail Lawrie), Kylah (Marli Siu) and Manda (Sally Messham) at all-girls Catholic high school Our Lady Of Perpetual Succour ahead of an outing to Edinburgh for a choir competition.
Sister Condron (Kate Dickie) is determined to protect her wards’ virtues, assisted by head girl Kay (Eve Austin). In the Scottish capital, Chell, Finnoula, Kylah, Manda and Orla down sambucas, flirt outrageously with Edinburgh lads and test the bonds of sisterly solidarity, occasionally blinkered to the consequences of their actions.
Almost two years on from its world premiere at the 2019 London Film Festival, Our Ladies still fizzes with energy.
The girls’ willingness to trade on their nascent sexuality strikes a discomfiting chord in the MeToo era (lest we forget, they are minors) but the script, co-written by Caton-Jones and Alan Sharp, makes abundantly clear they are in control of their actions.
Male nudity is played for laughs and sex scenes are sensitively staged.
Kate Dickie’s wimpled supporting performance answers prayers for sobriety and offers a note of caution to counterbalance the youthful exuberance, unleashed on location in Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands, which refuses to be tamed, rather like the characters themselves.