A few years ago, Olivia Wilde won people over with Booksmart, her Superbad like story about two girls getting into high school sexual escapades. People wanted so badly to project something bigger and better onto that very specific California story, eager for THE female high school comedic experience. All they had to do was wait for the fantastic girls of Fort William, Scotland and their 1990s swagger and bravado. In it’s Journey lyric small town girls in lonely worlds, Our Ladies delivers on the female Superbad premise and then some, finding something truly special along the way.
Fort William is a tiny little town in the Scottish Highlands. But that does not mean our 1990s ladies from there act like simpletons. Kayla (Marli Silu) for example, is lead singer of a band with a great voice, and hopes to use it to get herself famous. And Finnoula (Abagail Lawrie) has her sights set on the big Edinburgh trip to branch out and try new experiences. All of the girls in fact are excited for that Edinburgh choir trip. Orla (Tallulah Greive), Chell (Rona Morison), and Manda (Sally Messham) are a little boy crazy, and Kay (Eve Austin), the rich girl, has her sights on the universities in the city. As you expect, shots, singing, and shenanigans ensue.
What becomes evident the minute we get to Edinburgh is that we’re going to go on a fun, fascinating ride because of the 6 wonderful characters Alan Sharp, Michael Canton-Jones, and the 6 amazing actors create in bringing Our Ladies to vibrant life. Let’s start with Tallulah Greive’s Orla. Orla is set up to be the sad sack cancer girl, just happy to be living one day at a time. Yes, she is those things, but the movie turns her into a beacon of light and happiness who approaches all new experiences with an open heart, turning that horrible disease into beautiful personal agency. Orla’s desires are simple on the surface but underneath reveal a wealth of understanding and weird specificity, a sure sign everyone avoided turning her life into a cliche. Finnoula and Kay also break the archetypes their given; as they spend more time together, the “smart one with a secret” and the “badass hiding deep insecurity” evolve over the course of the movie, especially as their story involves Manda, who also grows richer as the “happy BFF townie”, brash but inherently sweet. And then there’s Kayla and Chell, sorta on their own little adventure. The overt sexuality comes out here and there, but their story is more about breaking out of a rut of behavior by people dragging them down, and having a good time just with themselves making memories and adventures. The “weakest” characters still provide something super interesting and a nice counterpoint to Our other Ladies, because their various little pairings help make each of our choir girls a little more individualized and more fascinating as we discover shades of the characters.
But The Jones/Sharp story has even deeper wells to go. The foundations of these 6 women have deep ties to small town living, and equally help inform their characters. The Finnoula/Manda relationship is particularly well constructed: the pair grew up inseparable, best buds 4eva. But while Manda is happy to keep the good times rolling, content with the life her upbringing would provide her, Finnoula is more restless, eager to break out of the “cage” small towns can put on their people in whatever way possible. Every person will understand this rite of passage for every friendship, and be as enthralled as I was at how well executed that story arc is. In fact, there are lots of fun dynamics between the Townie girls and the dreamer girls, each representing some piece of small town living and why that drives them to be who they are – the “hot boy in town” that every girl secretly likes a bit, exaggerated sexual experiences, oppressive teachers, rules about how small town society works, and exposure to outside cultural experiences. Each girl is exposed to all of these pieces of Fort William’s small town lifestyle and interprets them in their own way which makes Our amazing Ladies that much richer and more exciting to spend time with.
Sure, a lot of studios waited to release their BIG movies this summer, F9, Top Gun, Black Widow, etc. But it’s movies like “Our Ladies” that usually make me the most delighted that I waited. Sure there’s only one pyrotechnics sequence in this little gem, but the story of these amazing women is so much bigger and more enjoyable than any glitz and glam I can get from those other entertainment machines, I’ll take a franchise about the “1990s Fort William choir girls” every day of the week, because of how much fun I can have, how much I can learn about what life is like growing up for a teenage girl, and the chance to hear more Savage Garden songs: seriously, the most underrated of the boy bands.