New Zealand in the 1950s was not an especially friendly place for outcasts, especially for those who also happened to be young, queer, or Māori women. When teenage Nellie and Daisy are rounded up on the city streets, they are sent to the School for Incorrigible and Delinquent Girls under the care of a devout matron (Rima Te Wiata). There, they meet Lou, a wealthy Pākehā girl whose parents sent her to the school to curtail her wayward behaviour. Reminiscent of conversion therapy camps or Magdalene laundries for “fallen” women, the institution is designed to reform these juvenile rebels into obedient young ladies primed for marriage.

After a failed escape attempt, the girls and their cohort of renegades are shipped off to the rugged, isolated former leper colony Ōtamahua (Quail Island). We follow the rebellious trio through etiquette classes and lessons in the virtues of British colonisation, but doom sets in when they catch a glimpse of the dead-of-night discipline being performed against those who act up. With nothing left to lose, the girls begin plotting their escape.

★★★★ - The Post