This is a fact-based story about a social injustice that finally died a long-overdue death in 1996, when the last of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland closed. It is focused around the lives of three teenage girls who were imprisoned there back in the 1960s. One girl was sent there by her family because she was raped by a cousin. The second girl was sent there by her parents because she had a baby out of wedlock. The third girl, who was an orphan living at an all-girls Catholic orphanage, was sent there by the orphanage's headmistress for flirting with a group of boys. These young women were forced to the Magdalene Laundries to work under inhumane conditions "to wipe out the stains of their sins". Seems to me like the cure was worse than the disease.
I live in Chicago, and I've heard stories, some often reaching comical ground, of how schoolteacher nuns treated students. These stories pale in comparison to what I saw in the movie. They'd make the girls strip down naked and make humiliating comments about their bodies, they'd make them work long hours and not pay them anything, etc.
Overall, I thought it was an accurate portrayal of what those young women went through. I give it
.