GIRLS BEHAVING BADLY (OUR LADIES)
Drive around Northern Ireland over the past few weeks and there's a chance you might have stumbled upon the trucks being used for the filming of the third series of 'Derry Girls'.
The cast and crew of Channel 4's hit sitcom have been spotted filming at various locations in the city where it is set as well as in Belfast, the seaside resort of Portrush and in Downpatrick.
Thanks to COVID, the lockdowns it triggered and the burgeoning careers of its cast, the third and final series has taken some time to go into production.
However all that waiting guarantees it will be one of the most anticipated TV shows of 2022.
As fans wait, they may understandably have been looking for something in the same vein to fill the gap.
In fact, they might have felt their ears prick up when a Scottish movie released in late August was described by some critics as 'Derry Girls' meets 'Trainspotting'.
'Our Ladies' is directed by Michael Caton Jones of 'Scandal,' 'Rob Roy' and 'Basic Instinct 2' fame and based on a novel 'The Sopranos' by Alan Warner (not to be confused with the HBO Mafia series of the same name).
Warner's novel won the Saltire Society award for Scottish novel of the year in 1998.
Seventeen years later, it became an Olivier Award winning, hit play by Lee Hall, 'Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour' from the National Theatre of Scotland and the Live Theatre, Newcastle.
Inevitably, it has wound up on the big screen as a bawdy comedy about Catholic school girls on the loose in Edinburgh in the 1990s during a trip to the Scottish capital for a choir competition.
Tallulah Grieve plays Orla, a teenager who has been through chemo during a bout of leukemia and who has started to ignore her mother's orders to take her tablets.
Orla's mates include Abigail Lawrie and Sally Messham's Finnoula and Manda who have been close ever since they were toddlers.
They also comprise of Marli Siu's confident but devious Kylah and Rona Morrison's Chell.
Along with other members of the school choir, they gather for a bus trip from Fort William to Edinburgh and take the seats at the back of the coach that are normally preserved for rebel students.
The girls are a foul-mouthed, rather raucous bunch, flashing van drivers and holding up posters asking them to shag them.
They are full of plans about what they are going to do in the Scottish capital when Kate Dickie's nun supervising them, Sister Condron (who they call Sister Condom) gives them free time between rehearsal and the competition.
During the trek to Edinburgh, they tear strips off Eve Austin's goody two shoes, Kay.
Let loose on the city after rehearsal, they embark on an epic binge, as well as a spot of shopping.
This includes Kylah and Chell stumbling into a brothel and the entire pack ending up in a karaoke bar where they encounter Stuart Martin's sleazy Rangers top wearing Terry, who would give Wet Wet Wet's Marti Pellow a run for his money in thinking he's so gorgeous he should maybe eat himself.
Terry and his mate Jack Greenlees' fragile divorcée Bobby manage to coax some of the girls back to their flat with the promise of sex and more booze.
They are also joined by Chris Fulton's stutterer Danny, who Kylah and Chell stumbled across during their adventures.
Orla drifts off from the group to spend time walking around Edinburgh with Martin Quinn's mild mannered karaoke buff Stephen.
Finnoula wanders into a lesbian bar on her own where she is stunned run into Kay.
She discovers the doctor's daughter isn't the square that they all assumed she was.
With all this debauchery, will the girls get through the day intact without falling foul of Sister Condron?
Will their friendship be tested by their antics?
And what exactly is going on with Orla?
The one thing you could not accuse Caton Jones' comic film of being is dull.
It fizzes like an alcopop, stumbling along into one dodgy adventure after another.
The cast throw themselves into the action with great gusto, seizing the opportunity for potential star making turns.
Of the five principals Messham, Grieve and Siu turn in the most eye catching performances, while Lawrie, Morrison and Austin are effective.
Dickie revels in the chance to play a nun, Martin is memorable as Terry while Quinn, Greenlees and Fulton do everything required of them.
Brian McArdle is amusing in a cameo role as a desk sergeant who is not taking any bullshit from Kylah or Chell.
Alex Hope pops up as Fort William's rock god, Dickie Dickinson who is devastated by Kylah's decision to quit their band but has also been spreading himself out a bit among the female fanbase.
David Hasselhoff turns up too in the end credits.
While 'Our Ladies,' like an alcopop, offers an immediate sugar rush, it also leaves one hell of an unpleasant aftertaste.
While some critics have gushed that it is refreshing to see a film dominated by gutsy young women, it doesn't feel like a feminist triumph.
If anything, the hedonism it lauds feels a bit retrograde, dated and sleazy and like a dodgy male fantasy of supposedly liberated young women.
As Terry enthuses about the randiness of Catholic schoolgirls, it's hard to be dissuaded that Caton Jones, his fellow screenwriter Alan Sharp and the original author are guilty of perpetuating the same sleazy myth.
And far from the sweary, sexualised language being a heroic assertion of female liberation, it turns out as unappealing in young women as it would be among a group of young men.
In fact, sometimes it just comes across as sexual harassment.
The sweary, boozed up, devil may care stereotype of the Scots is also depressingly served up.
While it is true some people do play up to their national stereotypes, the film offers little by way of an alternative vision of the Scots and it is all the poorer for that.
A scene where the girls look out the window after rehearsal only to spy a young Edinburgh couple in flagrante is especially toe curling and excessive - particularly as Caton Jones gratuitously feels the need for Sister Condron to also take a peek and smile after shooing her pupils away.
Two climatic sex scenes in the film - one involving Manda and another involving Orla - are actually disturbing and you have to question the wisdom of such scenes.
Because of it's 1990s setting and it's characters convent school upbringing, it's far too easy to compare 'Our Ladies' to Lisa McGee's 'Derry Girls'.
Don't be fooled.
It feels instead like a sleazy male fantasy about rebellious Catholic schoolgirls on a debauched adventure.
If you want naive teenage rebellion in a Catholic school from a female perspective, stick to the show does it best.
'Derry Girls' is the real deal. 'Our Ladies' is barely passable.
('Our Ladies' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on August 27, 2021)
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