Review - Precious

Welcome To The Doll House

Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire

Score: 9,5

Once I heard about Precious, during the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Audience award, I got interested, but it was eclipsed by Tarantino’s new movie, which I enjoyed until a determined moment, and by Michael Haneke’s movie, that won the Palm D’Or and has been nominated for awards in the Foreign Language categories. But Precious actually premiered at Sundance, where it won awards for best picture, the audience award and a special acting prize for Mo’Nique. Then it received distribution support from Oprah and Tyler Perry. The movie is an adaptation of the novel Push, a best-seller in the 90’s, and directed by Lee Daniels, who produced Monster’s Ball, which earned Halle Berry’s Oscar.

Sapphire, in the movie is called Miss Blu Rain, is the author of the book, and a teacher for students on Harlem, and wrote the book based on the experiences she lived through her students during this time. The story is about Claireece Precious Jones, played by Gabourey Sidibe, a 17 year-old who’s sexually abused by her father since her childhood, she has a daughter and gets pregnant for the second time. Her mother, played by Mo’Nique, is jealous due to her boyfriend’s preference and tortures her daughter physically and psychologically.

Just through this plot you can tell that it’s a pretty tough movie. The cast also has two famous singers: Mariah Carey, who was devastated by critics in her first movie, Glitter, and even though I’m a fan I must admit that it’s a really lame movie. But she did so much better in her next movies. She is really good in this one, and she looks physically older, without fancy make up or other beauty enhancements. Maybe this would be her appearance if she wasn’t famous. She plays a social worker who takes care of Precious. The rocker Lenny Kravitz plays the nurse in the hospital when Precious gives birth.

As I said, the film won the audience award in Cannes, and everybody was crying in the theatre when I watched it. Slumdog Millionaire won the Oscar this year, but Precious shows people from the same social class and their problems without appealing to the fantastic or fantasy, proving that fairy tales only exist in book pages. Reality is always different. One is a nice fable, the other is a beautiful picture, the kind of movie that make us dedicate a few hours a week giving soup to the poor or teaching Geography in alternative schools, instead of hoping that they win the lottery or a big prize on TV.

The whole cast, even though it’s not big, it’s superb. Specially the two leading ladies, who could easily win Academy Awards. And they deserve it. But it would be easier for Mo’Nique to win (what I’m actually hoping for so far), because Sidibe has serious competition: Meryl Streep, who won for the last time 27 years ago, has been nominated 15 times and deserves another one for a long time, and Sandra Bullock, who finally showed her power after all this time. But just imagining Sidibe winning, I think even Meryl wouldn’t mind waiting a year or two more to get another one.

Above all, Precious is a film about life, about most of the people that live in this planet, which only celebrates the richness of 5% percent of its people, and Hollywood studios definitely represents that, always investing in the life of the rich and famous or juvenile sci-fi movies disguised as philosophy. But there’s always a small independent feature that shows what the Veuve Clicquot glasses in the movie theatre screens obfuscate from our sight.