A film based on The Sopranos (Warner) by Alan Warner. Set in 1996, a group of friends from a Catholic secondary school in Fort William travel with to compete in a school choir competition. However, the five girls - Orla, Finnoula, Chell, Manda and Kylah - are all much more interested in shopping and hitting the pubs than they are in the competition.
Provides examples of:
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: Although the film still ends with the girls ditching school, this leads to a "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue which gives them endings that aren't congruent with what we learn about them in The Stars in the Bright Sky save for some marginal overlap. Kay still gets an abortion. Orla still dies, but the The Stars in the Bright Sky mentions this happening a few years later than this epilogue says. Manda does fall pregnant during the Time Skip between the novels, but not by the Bouncer, and she's implied to still be living with her dad rather than in her own council flat. This is then followed by a non-diegetic Dance Party Ending where the cast lipsync along to the cover of In a Big Country mentioned below.
- Adaptational Location Change: While the choir still makes the trip to Edinburgh, the location of the school is changed from Oban to Fort William.
- Adaptational Protagonist: While The Sopranos (Warner), the novel the film is based on, features an Ensemble Cast with a relatively even distribution of time spent with the leads by the omniscient third person narrator, the film makes Orla a Character Narrator and the Point of View character.
- Adaptation Name Change: Chell's Irish setter Selwyn is replaced by a German Shepherd called Bosco.
- Art Shift: Orla’s flashback to the hospital looks like something out of a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film and not at all like any other scene in the movie.
- Bland-Name Product: While the girls visit a McDonald's in the book, in the film they eat in an unnamed fast food restaurant whose food packaging is pretty similar to that of the Golden Arches. Save for the flocked tiles, the restaurant bathroom is actually pretty similar to the look of McDonald's toilets at the time the film was set.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Of the main five, Manda is blonde, Chell has red hair and the rest are either black- or brown-haired.
- But Not Too Foreign: Although the film is ostensibly trading on its Scottish setting, when compared with the source material the dialogue has been noticeably diluted to make it more comprehensible to non-Scottish English-speaking viewers.
- Compressed Adaptation: With a 100-minute runtime, the film excises a lot of background details of the girls’ lives and of the Port in general. Kay and Fionnula’s trip to the hospital and their attempts to get back to the city centre are also cut.
- Eagleland Osmosis: Orla’s narration mentions Chell getting called a “tinker” and then goes on to define this term for the audience as “trasho blanco”. “Tinker” is a specific slur used in Scotland to refer to Irish Travellers and doesn’t have an identical implication to an American referring to someone as white trash.
- Fireworks of Love: Orla sees the fireworks set off by Chell and Kylah while she and Stephen are having sex.
- Framing Device: Orla is the film's point-of-view character and a Character Narrator, ostensibly from beyond the grave.
- Frozen in Time: The film retains the book's setting in 1996 rather than trying to update it.
- Local Soundtrack: Set in Fort William and Edinburgh, Scottish songs and artists feature prominently in the non-diegetic parts of the soundtrack, with tracks from Martyn Bennett, Christine Bovill and Eddi Reader.
- Moody Trailer Cover Song: Inverted. The trailer makes use of a cover by Eddi Reader of In a Big Country but takes the song in a much more joyful and hopeful direction rather than making it moody or morose.
- Mythology Gag: The scene with the girls waving at the van drivers at the back of the bus is reminiscent of the cover used in the book's first print run;.
- Present-Day Past: Several of the diegetic songs, such as "Truly Madly Deeply" by Savage Garden and "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba are from 1997, despite the film being set in 1996.
- Reality Is Unrealistic: Some pointed out that the trailer used eighties songs for a film where is nineties setting is a major selling point, but the songs in question (“A Girl Like You” by Edwyn Collins and a cover by Eddi Reader of “In a Big Country” by Big Country) have stayed pretty consistently popular in Scotland since they were first released, so it isn’t necessarily jarring to Scottish audiences to hear them in this context.
- Retraux: The flashback to the Nativity play is shown through a grainy filter presumably meant to emulate home movies shot on a Super 8. Given that said flashback was presumably taking place in the mid-to-late eighties, it might have been more accurate to go for an early camcorder look instead.
- Sex Montage: The sex scenes that happen towards the end of the film are compressed into a single montage.
- Tagline: "The Sisters Of No Mercy."
- Take That!: Kylah mentions "Electric Shite Orchestra" when disparaging the selection of CDs at the flat of the men they meet at the Pillbox - several ELO tracks were used as part of the music in the stage play.
