MATTHEW BOND

Many films have had their release plans affected by the Covid-19 pandemic but few as badly as Our Ladies, a delightful Scottish coming-of-age comedy that premiered at the London Film Festival of 2019 to largely warm reviews. A commercial release was confidently planned for March 2020…

Two postponements and endless delays later, it finally arrives in cinemas, and the good news is that it’s still an awful lot of beautifully acted, freewheeling fun.

Set in 1996 and adapted from Alan Warner’s novel The Sopranos (it’s also been an Olivier award-winning play), it’s the story of six spirited Catholic schoolgirls who travel from the Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour High School in Fort William to Edinburgh for a choir competition.

Singing, however, is far from uppermost in their adolescent minds. With most of them in Edinburgh for the first time – ‘a beautiful city but full of sin and wantonness’, warns their accompanying nun – they dream of filling the long afternoon between rehearsal and performance with shopping, drinking and meeting boys. Well, most of them anyway.

Scottish-born Michael Caton-Jones writes and directs, with the camera following the small groups the girls break into after they nip into the ladies and swap their demure school uniforms for mini-skirts and platform shoes. With brief flashbacks further fleshing out their characters, we begin to understand more about each of them and what makes them such a strong, almost terrifying gang when they’re together.

Amid the mounting chaos, what ensues is rude, funny and occasionally rather sweet. Our Ladies is not a film just for teenage girls but for anyone who’s ever been a teenage girl or known one. And likes Scotland, of course.

Look out for Kate Dickie as the accompanying nun; a belting karaoke version of Tainted Love; and Abigail Lawrie, as the sexually confused Finnoula, and Tallulah Greive, as Orla, who both stand out from the fine ensemble cast.

Almost as badly hit by the pandemic is The Nest, which had its