THE facts first. The Magdalene asylums in Ireland were run by the Sisters of Mercy on behalf of the Catholic Church, sanctioned by the Irish government.

Young girls were sent there by families or orphanages and, once there, these 'fallen women' were imprisoned and sent to work in the cleansing atmosphere of laundries to atone for their sins. Their sentence was indefinite; thousands of women lived and died there. The last laundry closed in 1996.

No excuse, no Catholic guilt trip is allowed by Scottish screenwriter and director Peter Mullan - that Glasgow kiss of an actor from Riff-Raff and My Name Is Joe - in his relentless, outraged, bitter-humoured indictment of a cruel and uncaring regime.

Set in Dublin in 1964 and based on case history, Mullan's film cum social critique dramatises the lives of three teenagers caught up in a system of repression where religious dogma ruled.

Margaret (Anne-Martie Duff) is raped by her cousin at a family wedding, and in the twisted logic of such times, is considered to have shamed her family. Orphanage resident Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone) is seen flirting with boys and for the good of her blossoming looks must mend her ways. Rose (Dorothy Duffy) has given birth out of wedlock, her son being forcibly removed from her.

All three, each played by a highly driven newcomer, are put into the hands of the Magdalene's sadistic nuns against their will, and subjected to the correctional pain and torment administered by the shrivelled Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan).

Mullan conducts his intense, rigorous and vigorous film-making as if wearing a black cap, remorseless in his condemnation of such a narrow, petty institution and its insidious evils, yet deeply humane. A journalist would be accused of a lack of balance if presenting such a one-sided story, but in film Mullan's tunnel vision seems entirely justified.

Updated: 11:36 Friday, March 07, 2003