Our Ladies, the first film of our 77th season achieved an overall appreciation score of 78% but received a rather mixed reception. Some of the comments submitted:
- Wonderful and poignant! Lovely way to start the season! Thank you!
- Excellent film, with the type of humour of Local Hero and Gregory’s Girl and great performances.
- A wonderful and mesmerising film. I was totally absorbed in it from start to finish. Entertaining yet powerfully emotive. Superb acting by the “girls”. Loved the way the film explored the sexuality & sexual desires of the girls without feeling the need to use blatant or gratuitous female nudity.
Fabulous way to start the 22/23 film season. Great choice. - Loved the movie, great to see sex hungry girls instead of the usual sex hungry boys.. quite refreshing..
- An interesting reflection on coming of age in the 1960s. Some laugh out loud moments and some more poignant ones too. Subtitles might have been helpful!
- Some of the filming was beautiful and much was very funny. A good start to the season.
- Scenery good but wasn’t drawn into the characters as I thought I would be. Funny in parts.
- I found it difficult to understand all the strong Scottish accents and found it hard to believe that school girls would behave like that and most of them looked older than 17, but it was amusing.
- Enjoyable but shocking in some ways. 18 year old convent educated girls (and I know – I was one) from the Scottish back of beyond would never have behaved in that precociously sexualised way in the 1990s. One had the feeling that everything about the production was male-dominated and how men would have liked school girls to behave. A sort of Benny Hill fantasy. I was prepared to go along with the story at the time but in retrospect I think there is something really sleazy about it. That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t well acted or well-produced. But to put so much talent into making a film that projected men’s fantasies onto young girls placing them in really dangerous situations…. no.
- A bit predictable and dated. Fun but not great.
- A bit bleak, compounded by the only semi-likeable character (Orla) dying from leukaemia 2 weeks after meeting David Hasselhof. I don’t believe that it’s possible for a nuclear submarine to get anywhere near Fort William. Could have done with sub-titles on occasion.
- It was distracting enough and visually enhanced by the photogenic nature of Edinburgh and the Scottish mountains. Although sometimes sententious (to the point of being a bit cringey) it had enough laughs to make for a pleasant evening’s entertainment. The ladette culture felt very rooted in the 90s, and it’s still interesting to see third-wave influenced stories picking up the traditionally male coming-of-age sex-comedy narratives seen in films like American Pie. The structure around a music competition also made me think of Brassed Off, and Our Ladies socio-political (And musical) engagement felt light in comparison. The intended pathos of the protagonist dying didn’t land for me – it felt manipulative and “unearned”. Still, there was plenty to enjoy and you can’t complain for £2!
- Wonder what Mary Wollstonecraft would have thought of women’s rights today going by this films portrayal. Found it a bit depressing on this count.
- Well-acted but patchy in places and somewhat predictable. Not a very grownup film! I found it a bit long. Made me feel my age – didn’t like coarseness of the film.
- Maybe girls of 18 and under were that interested in sex in that era or still are but the film had voyeurism appeal more than history! Some might think it even vulgar!
- Hard to rate this film. Relieved it was light hearted and unrelated to royalty. It had some funny moments but I was disappointed with the fictitious endings given to all the characters. I would have preferred to have imagined those for myself.