Really well made film. Unusual subject matter. Whoever plays the mother is incredible in the role. But the film goes too far. It ceases to be believable towards the end. After watching it, I was thinking 'does this film actually represent anyone?'... at the end credits it says 'for all the precious girls everywhere' or something like that, so it
thinks it represents a minority of people who've been through extreme abuse. I started wondering if the author, Sapphire, despite for some reason giving herself a stripper's alias, had experienced similar events in her life. So I looker her up.
Sapphire is a college-educated, feminist-lesbian performance-poet. She didn't grow up in Harlem. She's not overweight. She doesn't have any children, let alone disable children. She wasn't raped as a child. In fact the only similarity between her and the title character of her novel/film, is the color of her skin... So who are these 'precious' girls that the film is dedicated to?
Are there young women out there who are living personifications of the rantings/imagination of man-hating lesbian activists? That is, does a girl like Precious exist,
simply because somebody suggests that she does.
I don't think the novel/film would work if the main character wasn't black. And I don't mean that to be racist Quite the opposite. The
film is racist.
Sapphie has only ever written one novel. A novel about a black woman being oppressed from all sides. A novel where everything imagineable goes wrong. A novel where the reader cannot help but fee pity, cannot help but empathize.
It is manipulative fiction. And although I found it to be a competently produced film, with impressive performances, although it
moved me, it left me with that Michael Moore feeling. Like I had been used.
If it wasn't for that one line in the credits "for Precious girls everywhere" then I probably would've liked it. It would've been at least open to interpretation, rather than a portrait/tribute to a non-existant person.
2 stars
fengtau said:
Saw this movie last night. I thought it was good. 3 stars. Kinda show how parents are the most important thing is someone's life.
What?