Mulligan’s act is mesmerising

Review

First, the bad news: Suffragette isn’t a Meryl Streep movie, despite what you may have seen in the trailer. She has but a few moments of screen time.

And now the good news: It’s a Carey Mulligan movie. Mulligan, like Streep, is simply a mesmerising actress, one who can make even pedestrian material sing with the honesty, sophistication and nuance she brings to every role, on screen or stage (count yourself eternally lucky if you caught her recent Broadway run in Skylight.) In Suffragette, she doesn’t merely entertain us with her skill. She brings to vibrant life an important part of our global history that’s easy to forget — the struggle for a woman’s right to vote.

Though the movie, directed by Sarah Gavron, includes real-life characters like Emmeline Pankhurst (Streep) and Emily Wilding Davison (Natalie Press), who both have tiny but crucial roles, its main character is an amalgam. Maud Watts (Mulligan) is a 24-yearold mother who spends her days working in the same fetid laundry — awful chemicals, brutal hours, sexual abuse from the boss — where her own mother laboured.

Almost accidentally, Maud falls in with a group of women activists whose fight for the vote is gaining steam — and desperation. A fellow laundry worker is due to testify before a government committee on the issue, but a beating has left her unable to appear, and Maud is drafted. Her simple, heartfelt answers move the male lawmakers, but the measure fails. When that defeat is announced publicly, it leads to a melee in which women are beaten by police and dragged to prison, Maud among them.

Her furious husband (Ben Whishaw) insists that Maud never “shame” him like this again. But soon enough, Maud is compelled to go hear a speech from the movement’s leader, Pankhurst, who speaks briefly from a balcony before fleeing the police. She returns home to discover her husband has kicked her out, banning her from seeing their four-year-old son. She finds quarters with fellow suffragettes and fights for change.

Mulligan — whose portrayal is really the only truly nuanced one in the film, though Helena Bonham Carter gives fine support as a fellow warrior — finds a way to project determination and zeal but also sadness and hopelessness, all at once. —AP

Helena Bonham Carter and Mulligan in

Suffragette.