The Magdalene Sisters (2003)

The Magdalene Sisters Official Movie Site

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Love the Hard Way

Film.com's FREE movie of the week is "Love the Hard Way." Oscar-winner Adrien Brody and Charlotte Ayanna star in this drama about a thief who falls for a curious, beautiful young woman. As their intimacy grows, a slick cop (Pam Greer) is closing in.

CinemaSource

Rating: R

Release Date: Aug 1, 2003

Running Time: 119 mins.

Country Of Origin: United Kingdom

starring: Eileen Walsh, Geraldine McEwan, Nora-Jane Noone, Anne-Marie Duff, Phyllis McMahon, Dorothy Duffy, Mary Murray, Frances Healy, Eithne McGuinness, Eamon Owens

director: Peter Mullan

A drama which charts several years in the young lives of four "fallen women" who were rejected by their families and abandoned to the mercy of the Catholic Church in 1960's Ireland. While women's liberation is sweeping the globe, these women are stripped of their liberty and dignity, and they're condemned to indefinite sentences of servitude in The Magdalene Laundries in order to atone for their "sins." The last Magdalene Asylum in Ireland closed in 1996, and only since has the true horror of conditions in these institutions begun to emerge.

July 30, 2003

Until the Magdalene convents closed in 1996, more than 30,000 Irish women were put to work in laundry sweatshops to profit their souls and the Catholic Church. Director Peter Mullan sets his script -- based on actual testimony -- in Dublin in 1964. Among the alleged sinners are Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff), a rape victim; Crispina (Eileen Walsh), an unwed mother; and Bernadette (the stunning Nora-Jane Noone), a flirt. Geraldine McEwan is fiercely magnificent as Sister Bridget, letting flickers of…