The Magdalene Sisters is painfully beautiful

Rape, torment, beating, confinement, coercion, and starvation—though most would perceive these are words of torture, violation, and violence, to the nuns of the Magdalene Sisterhood convent, they are simply the implements of divine justice. The twisted world of 1964 Irish-Catholic fanaticism is realized, sparing no brutal detail, through the eyes of three victimized young women in Peter Mullan's sophomore directing and writing project, The Magdalene Sisters.

The medieval horrors wreaked upon the "wayward" women confined to the Magdalene convents are all the more sickening because of the film's contemporary time period. Set in the 1960s, The Magdalene Sisters is a portrait of ironic contrast: As cars and buses drive down Ireland's dirt and gravel roads and automatic washing machines replace the outdated methods of laundering, young girls continue to be beaten for flirting with a man and disowned for giving birth out of wedlock. Such are the crimes of Margaret, Bernadette, and Rose, the three women whose stories are chronicled in this film.

Margaret is an innocent—lured into a secluded room by a male cousin at family wedding, she is violently raped then abandoned to face the aftermath. Despite initial familial support, Margaret's parish priest immediately packs her away to Magdalene to atone for her sins, hiding her from the accusatory eyes of the Catholic community.

Bernadette is a beauty—she stands in the courtyard of her orphanage with her snapping eyes and cheeky smirk, separated from a frolicsome gaggle of adolescent boys by a concrete wall and iron fence. Flirtatious Bernadette is unaware that even then the nuns that guard her and her companions plot her removal to Magdalene, despite her sexual purity. At Magdalene, Bernadette learns that she has been sequestered away because she is considered temptation to young men.

Rose is a devout Catholic—she gives birth out of wedlock. Sitting by the hospital bed, the mother refuses to speak to the daughter and avoids the merest glance at her grandson. Minutes later, Rose is taken to her priest, where in her weakened state, she is overwhelmed by his conviction that her son will be permanently ostracized by society. Only seconds after she has agreed to give him up for adoption she changes her mind but her father holds her back, preventing her from ripping up the paperwork. She, too, is sent to join her sisters in disgrace at Magdalene.

At Magdalene, the three young ladies meet Sister Bridget, who advises them that working in the convent's laundry is the only way to cleanse their souls and be welcomed back into God's good graces. "Through the powers of prayer, cleanliness, and hard work the fallen may find their way back to Jesus Christ," Sister Bridget admonishes the three, right before she calls Margaret a whore and Bernadette a temptress.

Once the film enters Magdalene, Mullan resists the temptation to have his protagonists come together in solidarity and friendship. A concentration camp mentality is fostered at the convent, brought on by severe physical brutalities and psychological tortures. There there are no alliances or companionships, only alienation and desperation. The nuns that are the executors of these agonies are oblivious to the damage they inflict. For example, two Sisters force the women to stand naked while they laughingly pass crude judgments on their physical attributes. Like in the camps of World War II, some women, like the elderly Katy (Britta Smith), who has been incarcerated for 40 years, guard the young girls as harshly as the nuns themselves, exacting harsh punishments when they talk to themselves or outsiders.

The conditions force Bernadette to give sexual favors to the delivery boy in order to convince him to rescue her. The rescue fails, and as she is further tormented, Bernadette reveals her inner sadist. She steals from Crispina (Eileen Walsh), a simple-minded woman, purely to punish her. "Am I the only one who thinks that what she did was completely despicable?" Margaret demands upon discovering Bernadette's crime. She is greeted by indifferent silence. With his sparse script, silent soundtrack, and detached cinematography, Mullan isolates his characters and then breaks them down morally until they become what the nuns and society expect of them.

Mullan also clearly constructs the men of his story as equal perpetrators of the women's misery. Not only Margaret's cousin, but also the delivery boy and the local priest are corrupt and dehumanizing, taking advantage of the young ladies. But only the girls are punished for the crimes. When Bernadette is locked inside the convent by the delivery boy who promised to rescue her in turn for her affections, the nuns discover their plot. As punishment chop off all of Bernadette's hair as she kicks and screams, drawing blood with their scissors. This scene is filmed with the same intensity and frenetic motion as Margaret's rape, and in doing so, Mullan clearly draws a parallel: As a man was Margaret's unwilling downfall, so was one responsible for the fate of Bernadette.

As Bernadette, silver screen newcomer Nora-Jane Noone is the most hypnotic force on the screen. Her character's transformation from vain schoolgirl to icy adult is hauntingly enacted through Noone's chipped delivery of casual cruelty and at times frenzied bursts of energy and violence. As Rose and Margaret, Dorothy Duffy and Anne-Marie Duff are more subtle, but no less convincing. Though their presence is slightly less captivating than Noone's they are felt as a calmer, more introspective balance to her mania.

A true-to-life tale that will disgust even as it preaches, The Magdalene Sisters is relentless in its portrayal of the cruelty inherit in fundamentalist religious beliefs in Ireland. Though the setting is confined, the message is a universal warning against a perilous double standard that condemns the innocent and lets the guilty walk unscathed.

The Magdalene Sisters is rated R for violence/cruelty, nudity, sexual content, and language.