Precious

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

1. Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire
2. Production year: 2009
3. Country: USA
4. Cert (UK): 15
5. Runtime: 109 mins
6. Directors: Lee Daniels
7. Cast: Gabourey 'Gabby' Sidibe, Gabourey Sidibe, Lenny Kravitz, Mariah Carey, Mo'Nique, Paula Patton
8. More on this film

Peter Bradshaw

This movie has arrived heralded by voices of acclaim, not raised in ­celebration but weirdly lowered: hushed in awe, correctness and respect, as if in entering a shrine or a sickroom or the intensive care unit of a maternity ward. At last year's Cannes film festival, some pundits were literally unable to pronounce its title without dropping into a timid and faintly contrite sort of semi-murmur. I strolled up to a group of them after the premiere and ­breezily remarked that it was "powerful stuff". It was like going into the stable at ­Bethlehem, lighting up a fag, clapping one of the kneeling Wise Men on the back and saying that the Christ child seems like a pretty nice little chap.
Set in 1987, and based on the novel Push by the Harlem poet and author Sapphire, it is about an obese, ­taciturn African-American teenager called ­Precious, who has had two babies, the result of being repeatedly raped by her father. One of these children has Down's syndrome, and Precious calls him Mongo, short for "Mongoloid" – that discredited term Precious ­uncomprehendingly overheard and liked.
Her mother Mary, the rapist's ­partner, takes out her self-hate in repeated spasms of grotesquely jealous rage against Precious, routinely subjecting her to violent assaults and screaming abuse: "You're a dummy, bitch! You will never know shit, don't nobody want you, don't nobody need you! You done fucked around and fucked my mother-fuckin' man and had two motherfuckin' children; one of them was a god-damned animal runnin' around lookin' crazy as a motherfucker ... I shoulda aborted your ass!"
Even when Precious begins to overcome this abuse through special ­educational classes – in which she has been enrolled by a sharp-eyed teacher who has spotted her talent for ­mathematics – and even found a ­measure of articulacy through burgeoning happiness and self-esteem, she ­receives news of a terrible new burden of woe in the movie's final act.
Undoubtedly, the heartfelt lead ­performance from newcomer ­Gabourey Sidibe is a powerful spectacle. Her mother is well played by the comedian Mo'Nique, who creates a ­monster of cruelty and sadism, and has a ­chillingly comic moment when the welfare ­inspector comes round to her ­  apartment and she must transform ­herself into a husky-voiced paragon of caring respectability.
Paula Patton plays Precious's ­unfeasibly beautiful and caring teacher in the special class and Mariah Carey has a no-makeup and bling-free role, playing Precious's social worker, a grumpy sceptical badass, who is nevertheless reduced to tears by the final, cathartic three-way facedown with Precious and her mother.
The most important figure is, ­however, the one who never appears on camera: the executive producer is Oprah ­Winfrey, to whose movie debut this film appears to allude, not all that subtly, when Precious's teacher asks the class what their favourite colours are: her own is purple. There are motivational posters all over the place, urging commitment and self-belief, and we get a glimpse of one featuring Winfrey ­herself, on the importance of reading.
Winfrey's subliminal brand-identity was not, however, the drawback. What I found disconcerting was the extreme shift of tone between the extravagantly nightmarish, and the inspirationally upbeat. The horrendous unending nightmare of abuse that Precious ­suffers, made somehow worse by her agonisingly poignant daydreams of ­red-carpet celebrity, suddenly gives way to easier-going and even faintly sitcom-ish class scenes with a pre-packaged cast of unthreatening kids in the new school, tricked out with all manner of picturesque street-cred mannerisms. What with the accents, the leg-warmers and the yearning for success in the music industry, the film it suddenly resembles is Fame.
Precious can't help the racism that may be coming her way on account of the colour of her skin, or the sexist jibes from nasty guys on street corners, and she certainly can't help the rape and abuse she suffered. But how about ­being fat? Isn't it bad for her? Aren't any of these caring teachers going to ­mention heart disease, or talk to Precious about overeating as addiction, or as the symptom of abuse? I had the uneasy sense that her body mass index was ­being ­tacitly treated as part of her cultural identity, and not to be questioned.
Well, the character is supposed to have been through sheer hell, and teachers and healthcare professionals in this situation might conceivably decide to ease off on the question of weight for a bit.
That beautiful, inspirational teacher of hers (who is naturally as thin as a rake) actually encourages Precious to eat some more when she is round at her comfortable, middle-class professional home – because she feels hungry!
There is no doubting the raucous, tactless energy of the film, and the brilliantly brutal performance from Mo'Nique. It isn't the transcendent ­masterpiece that some admirers would have you believe: more like a black-comic nightmare that isn't exactly ­supposed to be funny. It's certainly ­arresting, though.