Review of Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire (2009) by Chads — 04 Dec 2009

The sight of a morbidly obese girl who runs out of a chicken joint with a ten-piece bucket without paying for it, practically courts laughter, and for some moviegoers, who prey on the weak, just may hoot, just may holler.

"Precious" is about a teacher trying to help a girl reclaim her name from an abusive mother. For now, let's call her Clareece, and this child of rape, undoubtedly, stands out, but in the worst possible way.

At school, her first day at an alternative school, Clareece disposes of the fried poultry container in the trash: cause for laughter follows. Breasts, thighs, drumsticks, wings. She ate it all. The moviegoer can see the gristle around her lips.

And when Clareece takes a seat beneath a poster that promotes self-esteem, she throws up: cause for more laughter follows, and perhaps, a little exasperation. "Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire" has a self-awareness about audience perception as it pertains to its protagonist.

It knows that moviegoers are more accustomed to trim and fit white girls than the dark-skinned girth of Gabourey Sidibe, and that includes the titular character herself, which this twenty-six-year-old newcomer portrays.

In her bedroom, Clareece looks into the mirror and sees white too. She sees Carrie White at the prom. Let me explain. Inexplicably, late in "Precious", Joanna(Yosha Roquemore) starts to laugh at the blood on her classmate and the blanket that's wrapped around the baby, following the girl's domestic dispute with her mother Mary(Monique).

(Things fly around, but here, it's not telekinesis.) It's the same sort of cruel laughter that befalls the Sissy Spacek character in the 1976 Brian DePalma classic, after John Travolta drenches the prom queen with pig blood.

(Incidentally, Mary forces her daughter to eat some poorly prepared pigs' feet.) By the end of the movie, the mother's tyranny over her daughter is over, and the teacher wins. It's a bittersweet victory.

While Clareece redefines Mary's baby nickname for her on the terms of this newly emancipated woman, she learns how life itself is precious, and for her, fleeting.