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.
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