Like myself, you'll probably miss the line "You had it coming to you", spoken below her breath by a female cop arresting Josie O'Dwyer for the first time. So we have to check the programme-note to learn that Josie had been raped at fourteen, setting off the chain of degradation that drives this 9-minute animated documentary.
It starts with her father trying to lay down some rules: "Who's going to marry you if you don't behave? You're a young woman now. In my house, you do what I say." All delivered comically, as a pastiche of the heavy-father act. Yet in the whole film, director Marjut Rimminen does not present one word of counter-argument. Instead it's left to Josie to complain at the end "You know what's expected of you in prison. There's no rule-book for living outside."
After that piece of scrambled logic, Josie ought to be hooted off the stage in short order. Instead she's authorised to tell us the ground-rules. "You have to steal", she declares, justifying her first pickpocketing offence. Just so we know. Just so we don't go in for any more silly law-abiding.
In jail, it hots-up a bit. "You have to be vicious." Well yes, there is a counter-victimisation drill, but we're still talking in terms of the criminal code, not some coherent philosophy of living. And there is an unmistakeable sign of self-hate in her next tablet of stone: "I wanted to come in with a crime that was bigger than my last one." At that rate, she can hardly grumble when she's moved into solitary, but still can't stop complaining, even when they release her.
After another couple of jailings, she's sent to a halfway hostel, where (presumably by chance) her anger comes under some degree of control. "I can use it in a constructive way" she says, without any explanation. In fact, it doesn't sound at all like her normal speech (or screech - try counting the F's). To me, it sounds more like a rubber-stamp socialist school-report to please Baroness Kennedy, creator of the 4-part BBC series Blind Justice, of which this was the final programme.
Should this review have carried a spoiler alert? Hells' Teeth, if only there was something to spoil!
It starts with her father trying to lay down some rules: "Who's going to marry you if you don't behave? You're a young woman now. In my house, you do what I say." All delivered comically, as a pastiche of the heavy-father act. Yet in the whole film, director Marjut Rimminen does not present one word of counter-argument. Instead it's left to Josie to complain at the end "You know what's expected of you in prison. There's no rule-book for living outside."
After that piece of scrambled logic, Josie ought to be hooted off the stage in short order. Instead she's authorised to tell us the ground-rules. "You have to steal", she declares, justifying her first pickpocketing offence. Just so we know. Just so we don't go in for any more silly law-abiding.
In jail, it hots-up a bit. "You have to be vicious." Well yes, there is a counter-victimisation drill, but we're still talking in terms of the criminal code, not some coherent philosophy of living. And there is an unmistakeable sign of self-hate in her next tablet of stone: "I wanted to come in with a crime that was bigger than my last one." At that rate, she can hardly grumble when she's moved into solitary, but still can't stop complaining, even when they release her.
After another couple of jailings, she's sent to a halfway hostel, where (presumably by chance) her anger comes under some degree of control. "I can use it in a constructive way" she says, without any explanation. In fact, it doesn't sound at all like her normal speech (or screech - try counting the F's). To me, it sounds more like a rubber-stamp socialist school-report to please Baroness Kennedy, creator of the 4-part BBC series Blind Justice, of which this was the final programme.
Should this review have carried a spoiler alert? Hells' Teeth, if only there was something to spoil!
