Magdalena appears from the dark, perched on a bar stool, cigarettes and liquor by her side, an array of hanging lamps casting a sultry glow. Her first words set the tone – “You want to fuck me,” she says – and lead us into an uncompromising introduction, littered with sex, violence and sideways jokes.
She is the creation of French-English actor and writer Lily Sinko, and as her character’s name suggests, we’re hurled through a life of saintliness and sin, despair and redemption, as Magdalena does the best with the hand she’s dealt. We travel to her childhood in Marseille with a hostile “Papa”, an airport abduction that sees her deposited at the Virgin Mary School for Bad Bad Girls (Cash Only), and a wild escape through the streets of France, finding fleeting refuge in a cathedral.
