Suffragettes' battle cry

LONG before Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, women in Britain were not allowed to vote, but due in part to the efforts of a feminist movement precursor, they won that right half a century earlier. Suffragette looks at the origins of that hard-earned victory, through the eyes of a small group of women who organised and fought - not in the trenches but in the workplace, in Parliament and even in their own homes - for themselves and future female generations.

A period drama based on a real-life struggle for equal rights could have been a yawn-inducing bore, and Suffragette certainly covers some serious socio-political ground, but director Sarah Gavron and screenwriter Abi Morgan have crafted a thriller of sorts based on the travails of a working-class laundry-woman who accepts her lot in life without question, unaware that there is even an alternative to consider.

The awakening of Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) is portrayed with such sensitivity and intensity that her fight becomes our own and the personal hardships suffered hit home - even though modern-day audiences (that is, in parts of the world where women have equal rights) will have little that they can relate to. Mulligan is thoroughly convincing in the role of a determined young woman caught up in, and inspired by, events raging around her. Maud, a fictional character based on the lives of several women, is the emotional anchor of the film. When we first meet her, she is at 24, already a senior figure at the industrial laundry run by a chauvinistic brute (Geoff Bell) who is given to groping the young women (and girls) who work there - it's simply something they have to put up with, along with the low pay and abysmal conditions.