Peter Mullan's (2002) film is based primarily upon the TV documentary 'Sex in a Cold Climate' by Steve Humphries which was first aired on RTE (Ireland) and BBC (England) in 1998. The documentary records the recollections of four Irish women who spent their youth and a good proportion of their adult lives as involuntary guests of uncompromising Roman Catholic nuns.

The film is set in a particular example of this institution which, somewhat akin to the English workhouses of the late 19th and early 20th century, became established in Ireland after the Second World War. The Magdelene Laundries took their name from the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene, a 'fallen woman' whom Christ befriended.

We join the main heroines of the movie - Margarette (Anne-Marie Duff),Bernadette (Norah-Jane No one),Rose (Dorothy Duffy) and Crispina (Eileen Walsh) in cameo as their entrance scholarships for the Magdelene Laundry are being sat.

What's most uncomfortable about this part of the movie, is trying to work out what's going on. Trying to work out what it is that's being whispered and what will be the upshot of it, and why. At first, it seems like the soundtrack of the film and the contrast have failed. But before long, it becomes obvious that the soundtrack of the film and the contrast have succeeded. The dark and deafening silence surrounding the circumstances under which these young women are being consigned to the unwelcome stewardship of the Magdalene Sisters comes through loud and muted.

We follow their induction into the laundry by Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan),ably assisted by the Sisters Jude (Frances Healy),Clemantine (Eithne McGuinness) and Augusta (Phyllis MacMahon) who contrive with formally celibate gentlemen like Father Fitzroy (Daniel Costello) to represent a world in which God's greatest ideal is achieved through punishment and penitence.

As the film progresses, we begin to understand why it is no accident that these institutions should have been laundries. They could - after all - have been bakeries, dairies, canneries or places where mailbags are sewn.

With every garment that passes through the process, unmentionable filth is cleansed - if the Sisters are to be believed. And if the Sisters are to be believed, the sins of the teenagers and the route to Heaven is bound up in hot water, salt and flagellation.

And as we follow these unsaintly girls on their hapless journey, we finally learn that salvation is as straightforward as a letter we are not privileged to read and a brother who arrives with a suitcase - as if there is anything that anybody could possibly want to carry away from a place like this.

This film is a powerful elegy to the suffering of these unfortunate girls who, constrained to silence for so long, have finally found a voice.

It's 1964 Ireland. Margaret McGuire is raped by her cousin during a family wedding. She's the one packed up and sent away. Bernadette Harvey is a flirtatious orphan. Rose Dunne is an unwed mother pushed to give up her child. Crispina is mentally challenged. They and the other girls all end up in a Magdalene Asylum for young women run by Catholic nuns. They do laundry earning money for the order without getting paid themselves. It is a brutal place where the girls suffer for their sins.

It's a powerful indictment of this medieval system. The girls have a heart breaking story. Crispina is the saddest of them all. Nora-Jane No one is amazing in her acting debut. The story is told simply by Peter Mullan who is usually an actor.

In Ireland in the 60's, three young women, one of them raped by her cousin, the second one a single mother and the third one a flirting and rebel student, are sent by their parents to the Magdalene Sisters Asylum. Although being administrated by nuns, they find exploitation, forced labor, sexual abuse, sadism, all the sort of maleficence in the place.

First of all, I would like to explain that I am not religious, but I did not like this movie. In the cover of the DVD, it is written that this story is based on true facts. In the end of the movie, it is explained that 30,000 Irish girls were sent to places like this asylum called laundry, and the last "laundry" in Ireland was closed in 1996. However, this overrated movie seems to me very exaggerated and manipulative, with many insinuations of greed, sexual abuse and unusual situations, since the place looks like a prison, or a concentration camp, and the nuns look like the character "Ilsa" in a convent. The performances are excellent, but the story is similar to a common movie of women prison, showing all the usual sadism, only this time "in the name of God". My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Em Nome de Deus" ("In the Name of God")