Inspired by the success of the 1979 film Scum, this British drama graphically depicts the ugliness of life within a woman’s borstal (youth detention centre).
Two girls escape from an open (minimum security) borstal: teenage mother Annetta (Chrissie Cotterill) wants to visit her baby daughter (who is being raised in a convent) and lesbian Carol (Amanda York) hopes to be recaptured and sent to a closed (maximum security) borstal where her girlfriend Doreen is being held.
Carol’s plan works, although she is devastated to find that Doreen (Debby Bishop) has found herself a new girlfriend inside.
When Annetta is arrested at the convent and sent to the same closed borstal, she assumes it was Carol who grassed her up and proceeds to plan her revenge.
Carol finds protection in the form of inmate Eddie (Kate Ingram), while Annetta’s constant bullying attempts keep her in solitary confinement. But Carol’s world is turned upside-down when Eddie is released from borstal, and her protection is gone.
The inmates adopt various – often eccentric – methods of fighting off the drudgery and boredom of their
ordered lives. One is a cleaner who constantly scrubs her cell; another has withdrawn into a world which she shares only with a captured pigeon, while another keeps her companions amused by a seemingly endless tirade of dirty ditties always sung to the same tune.
Even after a final, brutal confrontation between Annetta and Carol (which leaves the latter bruised and battered), Carol – in another futile escape attempt – risks everything to find a way to help Annetta keep her baby.
All the actresses – many of them unknowns and (clearly) too old to be playing 20-year-olds – offer up astonishing performances, and the film is well-scripted and thought-provoking with taut direction from Mai Zetterling and superb cinematography from Ernest Vincze.
Carol Howden
Amanda York Annetta Brady
Chrissie Cotterill Kathleen
Elizabeth Edmonds Eddie
Kate Ingram Mac
Mandi Symonds Glennis
Kathy Burke Doreen
Debby Bishop Pam
Eva Mottley Sandy
Imogen Bain Molly
Honey Bane Sharon
Camille Davis Gwen
Rachel Weaver Mary
Dawn Archibald Hilary
Faith Tingle Phyllis
Lilian Rostkowska Eva
Anna Mackeown Budd
Dana Gillespie Crow
Pauline Melville Strapper
Pam St. Clement Jones
Miriam Margolyes Daly
Jacqueline Holborough Shaw
Caroline Needs Mrs Paddy
Olwen Griffiths Miss Holly
Carol Gillies Governor
Richard Butler Leo
Brian Croucher Dr Siles
Tim Kightley Puff Guts
Robbie Coltrane Sister
Jane Freeman Terry
Steve Alder Rex
Ken Shorter Gary
Bradley Hardiman
Director
Mai Zetterling
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Carol finds protection in the form of inmate Eddie (Kate Ingram), while Annetta’s constant bullying attempts keep her in solitary confinement. But Carol’s world is turned upside-down when Eddie is released from borstal, and her protection is gone.
