074 REVIEW
Directed by
MICHAEL CATON-JONES
Starring
EVE AUSTIN
TALLULAH GREIVE
ABIGAIL LAWRIE
Released
24 APRIL
ANTICIPATION.
A beloved, award-winning novel
finally makes it to the screen after
20-plus years.
ENJOYMENT.
Teen horniness is not a crime.
IN RETROSPECT.
A loving tribute to uncensored
working class women –
an acutely written and
performed triumph.
et’s call Our Ladies one of the new great British
teen movies. Its journey to the screen is even
older than its riotous protagonists: director
and co-writer Michael Caton-Jones first optioned
the rights to Alan Warner’s 1998 novel ‘The Sopranos’
over 20 years ago.
The film charts 24 hours in the lives of five
working class friends, all nearing the end of their
Catholic school days in Fort William, a small town
in the western Scottish Highlands. There’s Orla
(Tallulah Greive), a leukemia recoveree; Kylah (Marli
Siu), the frontwoman of an aspiring garage band of
useless boys; Chell (Rona Morison), an impoverished
girl haunted by the drowning of her father; Fionnula
(Abigail Lawrie), the de facto group leader secretly
coming to terms with her sexuality; and Manda (Sally
Messham), who’s feeling the cold shoulder from
once-close Fionnula.
There’s also Kay (Eve Austin), a derided,
wealthier gang member destined for university and
prospects beyond reach for the main crew. They
all head on a school trip to Edinburgh to compete
in a choir competition, but are more interested in
partying, drinking and chasing random hook-ups
than they are winning. The day’s misbehaviour and
surprise romantic developments spell drama and
further debauchery for their return home.
An unrelated, Olivier-winning stage adaptation of
‘The Sopranos’ had notable success in recent years, but
it’s probably the hit status of tonally similar Northern
Irish sitcom Derry Girls, which also follows unruly
Catholic schoolgirls, that played some small part in
Our Ladies finally getting the green light. Looking atthe project from a more contextual vantage, there are
justified discussions in contemporary film culture
about who should be allowed to tell what stories.
Without Caton-Jones’ long-held devotion to getting
this made, the immediate optics of a male filmmaker
helming a tale of young women eager to get shagged
admittedly aren’t great.
Thankfully, this man is firmly on the side of
these girls, and he avoids any kind of moralising
or shaming over their abrasive qualities, gutter-
minded patter, casual cruelty and, yes, extreme
horniness. Direction and cinematography avoid
the hyper-sexualisation of bodies, while still
allowing for characters to be sexual in the ways
they find empowering. And with the dynamic
ensemble, every single one giving a star-making
turn, lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry and palpable
authenticity are achieved with aplomb.
To avoid factors like prevalent mobile phones,
the film is explicitly set in 1996, in the decade the
book was originally published. This is also wise
given how Fionnula’s issues concerning coming
out are rooted in the particularities of ’90s
Britain. That said, other period inconsistencies
prove Our Ladies’ lone bugbear: two massive
hit songs from the next two years prominently
feature, while signage for a Harry Potter merch
shop is repeatedly visible. These complaints are
pedantic, though, as they don’t stall the film’s
racing momentum, which veers smoothly from
exuberant optimism and gross-out humour to a
melancholic reflection on class inequality and fate.
JOSH SLATER-WILLIAMSOur Ladies
L