We Know That There's Always Tomorrow

Review: Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire

All the hype, the Sundance cred, the Oprah-Tyler Perry stigma. Precious may be based on a novel, as noted by the insistent subtitle, but it’s a visceral movie experience. Ten minutes in, during the first of many eviscerating verbal beat-downs by Precious’s mother Mary (a devastating performance by Mo'Nique), I worried I wouldn't be able to watch more.

Lee Daniels deserves credit for imbuing the grimmest of urban tragedies with occasional flashes of an exterior world. Precious, sixteen and pregnant again by her father, steps away—or maybe toward—into a fantasy world: swashes of parties, red carpets, autograph signings, the latest couture. The film charts a course of transformation via Precious's imagination. When more and more weighs her down (and believe me, the heaviness never lets up): through writing, her teacher and nurse (Paula Patton and Lenny Kravitz, both on their game), the birth of her son.

I don't know if Gabourey Sidibe will sustain a career in acting, but she's very affecting here. Her taciturn face and mumbled speech form a blank slate on which she registers every hardship with tenacity. In the final scene, a tremulous showdown between Mo'Nique and Sidibe, each actress holds her own without lapsing into sentimentality.

Precious invokes many emotions, but is never maudlin. Some musical cues (gospel ballads at the end of a fight, for example) feel shoe-horned in, as if Daniels needed all the levity he could muster. It's amazing how this film has taken off since its Sundance premiere; though it's easy to blister at the horrors within, there's more than urban welfare critique. Precious, like the title character, feeds off a strain of possibility, just below the surface, that almost proves redemptive for character and audience.