Our Ladies Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Our Ladies Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson April 12, 2022

In 1985, director Michael Dinner made a small gem titled Heaven Help Us (aka Catholic Boys in the UK and other countries), which is about the misadventures of young male teens' at the parochial school of St. Basil's Catholic Boys’ Prep School in 1965 Brooklyn. (It marked the feature debuts for Kevin Dillon, Patrick Dempsey, and Stephen Geoffreys. It also stars Andrew McCarthy [in his third film], Mary Stuart Masterson as his love interest, Donald Sutherland as headmaster Brother Thadeus, and John Heard as benevolent priest Brother Timothy.) As I watched Our Ladies (2019), I was often reminded of Heaven Help Us as it covers some of the same material in the opposite gender but in inferior fashion.

The Scotsman reported that Scottish auteur Michael Caton-Jones had been wanting to make a film adaptation from Alan Warner’s third novel The Sopranos (1998) for two decades. In 2015, Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) transformed Warner's novel into the play, Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, which premiered at the National Theatre of Scotland where it was a terrific success. This created renewed interest for a prospective movie, which was in the pipeline as early as 2013 when the late screenwriter Alan Sharp co-wrote a script with Canton-Jones. The latter cast mostly first-time actors for Our Ladies. The movie is narrated by Orla (Tallulah Greive), who's recovering from lymphoblastic leukemia following a "miracle" visit to Lourdes. The picture opens in 1996 amid the beatific Scottish Highlands. The camera swoops down to show the backs of Orla and five other girls clad in all-white in front of a Highland loch. Orla's friends are Kylah (Marli Siu), Manda (Sally Messham), Chell (Rona Morison), and Finnoula (Abigail Lawrie). They attend Our Lady of Perpetual Succour School for Girls in the west-coast town of Fort William. They're preparing for a bus trip to Edinburgh where they'll compete in a choir competition. Their headmistress is the strict Sister Condron (Kate Dickie), who the girls nickname "Condom" for her preaching of abstinence. Rich teen Kay (Eve Austin) is the official "head girl" who feels out of place with Orla's group. Caton-Jones amply develops her character as she becomes close to Finnoula. Once they reach Edinburgh, the Catholic girls are more focused on going to bars and shopping than any choral competition. They also hear a submarine will be docking what they hope is a host of lustful sailors who they seek out at the local dive The Mantrap. The girls do meet some guys there but they aren't exactly who they were expecting. Kylah does karaoke, which becomes a show-stopping performance.

The prurient schoolgirls liberally exchange a lot of sex jokes that are extensions of their free-spirited personalities. Unfortunately, the film lacks a dramatic story arc to anchor their ebullience. There are various subplots, such as the relationships Finnoula has with her best friend, Manda, and her budding romance with Kay. Chell is still struggling to grapple with her father's demise. The narrative is almost redeemed with a spectacular (albeit brief) fireworks show. A cigarette is accidentally dropped on a bundle of firecrackers which ignite through the apartment window of a bouncer. But Our Ladies lacks the compelling story events that are present in a film like Heaven Help Us. There is tension when some of the girls lose their school uniforms and have to stay in the back of the choral group to hide their casual apparel during a live performance. But the girls aren't really concerned about the potential consequences and this disconnects the suspense the audience was feeling.

Caton-Jones does have fun with movie and TV intertextuality. Orla's room is adorned with a portrait of Leonardo DiCaprio from The Basketball Diaries (1995). Caton-Jones directed DiCaprio in This Boy's Life (1993). Hi co-star, Robert De Niro, is later seen on a vintage poster of Taxi Driver (1976). If you stick around long enough during the end credits, you'll see a certain Baywatch star in living color.

Our Ladies Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sony's release of Our Ladies comes on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-25. Canton-Jones's twelfth feature appears in its original exhibition ratio of 2.39:1. There are no source flaws found on this HD transfer. The picture has a rather diffused look that gives it a softer appearance. It was shot mostly with overcast skies and cinematographer Denis Crossan takes advantage of any white light that creeps through the windows. There are beaming lights in the bar scenes and during the choir concert (see Screenshot #s 8-10). I especially like the use of neons in the bar (see frame grab #11). The movie incorporates either 8mm or 16mm footage when it recounts some of the schoolgirls' childhoods (see capture #20). Sony has encoded the feature at an average video bitrate of 18943 kbps.

Sony has provided eleven chapters for the 106-minute movie.

Our Ladies Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sony has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround (3839 kbps, 24-bit). I often had to turn the volume up to hear word enunciations coming through the actors' Irish accents. Fortunately, there are English SDH as well as English and French subtitles. There are thirty different ballads/musical pieces heard in the film, which includes Springsteen's "If I Should Fall Behind." The underscore composed by Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly reminds me of The Chieftains' music.

Our Ladies Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Unfortunately, there are no extras.

Our Ladies Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Our Ladies' core strength is that it's a performance-heavy picture. Unfortunately, the dramatic situations are let down by a lackluster screenplay. Josh Slater-Williams wrote on the British Film Institute's website that it ranks as one of the "10 great Scottish youth films." But are there that many Scottish youth pictures to begin with? I wish it had taken more chances like Heaven Help Us does. (When will Dinner's directorial debut finally arrive on Blu-ray?) Sony delivers a solid transfer albeit with a very low bitrate. The lossless 5.1 track is also strong. Alas, there are no supplements. A VERY MILD RECOMMENDATION for Our Ladies.