The Thousands

Watching Precious is emotionally gruelling. This isn’t a date movie or a Friday-night escapist flick. But it does that rare thing: introducing a character whose journey is hard but whose victories are small. Director Lee Daniels finds a compelling poetry in hyperrealistic close-ups, jump-cuts and R&B musical montages, although I was unimpressed by the heavy-handed fantasy sequences.

Harlem, 1987, and Claireece ‘Precious’ Jones (newcomer Gabourey Sidibe) is 16, obese, illiterate, pregnant for a second time after being raped by her father, and utterly cowed by her bitter, violent mother (Mo’Nique). The world already seems to have given up on her, but behind the frustratingly impassive front Precious presents as a funny, imaginative person who knows she’s not stupid.**It’s certainly didactic, but what I liked about Precious is that its alternative school isn’t a magical, To Sir With Love solution. Precious still has many rivers to cross. But the kindness she tastes from teacher Ms Rain (Paula Patton), social worker Mrs Weiss (Mariah Carey) and from Nurse John (Lenny Kravitz), who assists at the birth of her baby, shows her she deserves to amount to something.