She’s sixteen, illiterate, and fat as all get-out. And she’s pregnant. With her second child. Her first had the Down’s Syndrome. Her mama? She’s on the welfare and real mean. I mean, Cinderella, you think your mama’s mean, you ain’t seen nothing like this bitch. And guess who the father is? It’s her daddy. Oh and did I mention? He just died of the AIDS. Illiteracy, incest, teen pregnancy, obesity, welfare and the AIDS – a six-pack of hot-button issues, all in one melodrama!
What is most remarkable about “Precious”, based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire, is that it doesn’t suffocate under the psychic weight of its overburdened source material. Claireece Precious Jones inhabits three distinct cinematic universes that touch but never commingle(with the exception of one scene – more on that later): the melodramatic one, dominated by her monstrous mother (played ferociously by the comedian Mo’Nique) and featuring a domestic life so horrific that Dante’s Inferno starts to sound like a 5-star Caribbean getaway in comparison; the fantasy world, where Precious escapes to whenever her mother starts pummeling her; and the neo-realistic one, which encompasses all of Precious’ interactions within the Harlem boundaries that circumscribe her life.
The shifts between the melodramatic and the neo-realistic are astonishingly successful – in his second feature as a director, Lee Daniels (“Shadowboxer”) demonstrates an assuredness in moving Precious from a set of circumstances that just skirts the clichéd stereotypes of inner city domesticity to a light, airy outside world where hope is more than just another four letter word and not everyone hates you. It is in this world where we discover that Precious, thanks to the efforts of her saintly teacher, Ms Rains (Paula Patton), actually has a shot at overcoming the misery of her life. Stylistically, it is also where “Precious” succeeds most as a film, delivering an improvisational feel and an almost tactile sense of realism reminiscent of Laurent Cantet’s remarkable Palm D’Or winner “The Class.” The fantasy sequences are less successful – they are neither specific nor fantastic enough to communicate anything unique about Precious, and ultimately rob the audience of the possibility of a real answer to the question of how someone like Precious manages to survive.
Daniels’ greatest strength as a director clearly lies in his work with actors, and he manages to extract just enough hope, humor and transcendence from them to keep us from slitting our wrists. Precious, as played by Gabourey Sidibe, is nearly expressionless for the majority of the film, as if to suggest that any emotional response would be inadequate to the enormity of her inner turmoil; and when just the hint of a smile does play across her face, the effect is almost vaudevillian in scope. The performances in all of the smaller roles are similarly self-assured and unadorned, giving the impression that the performances aren’t really performances at all. Even Mariah Carey is so grounded and plainspoken as Precious’ Social Worker that it took me a few moments to recognize her. The only actor that doesn’t seem to fit is Paula Patton, and it has nothing to do with her acting. If Ms. Patton were only garden-variety beautiful that would be one thing, but if you’re going to cast a woman as ridiculously beautiful as Paula Patton as a school teacher – is it just me? - it would help to have at least one character acknowledge it.
Finally, there’s Mo’Nique. She may be a comedian in her other life but there are no laughs here – although she’s burdened with playing a true monster, she somehow manages to find just enough humanity in her character to avoid the trap of garden variety celluloid villainy. In the climactic scene where the melodramatic and neorealistic worlds finally collide, Mo’Nique delivers tour de force that is operatic in tenor and yet so hideously believable that it leaves you wondering despite yourself whether all of the compound misery of “Precious” might be realism after all.
Jeffrey Janger is a contributing writer for The Film Crusade.
