Movie Review: Philomena
Movie: Philomena (Stephen Frears, 2013) Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress (Dame Judi Dench), Original Score, Adapted Screenplay So, Philomena . An Irish girl named Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) gets pregnant as a teenager and her parents take her to one of the Magdalen laundries, where she has her baby and works off her indentured servitude. The nuns then adopt her little boy out without telling her. It's not until she's grown old and married and her children are grown that she ever reveals anything about the birth of her son, and starts her search for him in earnest, backed by Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan), a reporter in search of a story to redeem his career. That the laundries were awful is really not in doubt. The Irish government came out in 2001 and finally admitted that they were a cultural abuse perpetrated on the women of Ireland by the Catholic Church and the government, who turned a blind eye to anything that happened there. That's not in the m...