Mixed blessings | 30 January 2010

Precious
15, Nationwide

Claireece ‘Precious’ Jones is a 21-stone, illiterate, black, 16-year-old girl with a father who rapes her — not every day, but still — and a mother so insanely abusive that she throws televisions at her and force-feeds her hairy pig’s feet. (Not every meal, but still.) Precious has already had one child by her father — a Down’s syndrome girl, known non-affectionately by the family as ‘Mongo’, short for Mongoloid — and is pregnant with another. She describes herself as ‘just ugly black grease to be wiped away’, but is then dispatched to an alternative school where a saintly teacher works her saintly magic and, what do you know, Precious is precious, and worth something after all. This is a film that veers between being something special and something tritely familiar but, even at its worst, it’s entirely rescued by the two main bravura performances: Gabourey Sidibe is fantastically heartbreaking as Precious, while Mo’Nique is frighteningly convincing as her mother, Mary. Mo’Nique is an American comedienne, by all accounts, and, no, I have no idea why she spells her name like that. Perhaps she thinks it makes her U’Nique.

The film, which is set in Harlem, begins with Precious in a maths class, sitting at her desk, although she is so mountainous it’s more like the desk is sitting at her, and cowering. Precious is not just black but very black; so black she almost shines blue. And her face is so big and heavy all normal expression is limited. She rarely looks up, talks little and, when she does, mumbles half-heartedly, as if no onc could possibly be interested in what she has to say, which no one is. Yet somehow — with the set of her chins, with a single, blistering gaze, with a defeated munch on that hairy pig’s foot — Sidibe always lets us know there is someone in there, and this someone is hurting.