Precious cargo

Haunting puts it mildly. Precious is a movie that stayed with me for days and weeks afterwards.

PRECIOUS, based on best-selling book "Push" by Sapphire, is no fairytale. Just when you think things can't get worse, they do. It is full-on and gutsy and above all, very real. It's not a story you see in Hollywood, which favours the Pygmalion make-overs of Pretty Woman through to Princess Diaries. Only in her vivid fantasy life does Precious get close to any glamour and a whiff of a lipstick.

No, it's the story of a teenager who it would be easier for most people, myself included, to write off or walk past, hoping our worlds never collide.

Below, Precious with her Down Syndrome daughter Mongol and her abusive mother Mary.

Directed by Lee Daniels, who produced the Halle Berry Oscar-winner Monster's Ball, Precious is set in Harlem and tells the story of an overweight, illiterate teen who is pregnant with her second child, who is invited to enrol in an alternative school in the hope that her life can head in a new direction.

Executively produced by Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, Precious stars Gabourey Sidibe as Clarice Precious Jones, Lenny Kravitz as a kind nurse who befriends her when she gives birth at hospital, Mariah Carey as the social worker sans make-up, Paula Patton as the stylish and warm-hearted teacher, and comic Mo’Nique as the welfare-reliant mother.

Below: Mariah Carey barely recognisable in her role as a counsellor to Precious, shocked by what she hears unfolding.

Below: Paula Patton as the teacher who shows Precious her first kindness and love at the special school. We loved her 80's outfits and American glam style in the midst of so much ugliness and pain.

Below: Bedside manners. Lenny Kravitz as the hot nurse.

Below: much of the film's gentle humour and pathos comes from the cheeky schoolgirls in her classroom at Teach One, Reach One school.

Precious was winner of the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize, winner of the Toronto International Film Festival Peoples Choice Award, and nominated for 3 Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress.

Gabourey Sidibe, who got the role in her first ever acting audition, was competing against Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren and Sandra Bullock at the Screen Actors Guild Awards (Bullock took the title) and the previous week before, Sidibe was up against Mirren and Bullock at the Golden Globe Awards (again, Bullock won.)

Now, people are talking of an Oscar win for her role. But whether or not she wins the statue, the prize has been to tell the story that stays secret and speak up for those who hardly ever have a voice.

I would especially recommend it to any teachers - and those in caring professions - who would find it particularly inspiring to see the change they can bring to a life wthout hope. I came away feeling like I wanted to notice the people who go unnoticed and don't have a voice and to have more compassion. It certainly makes one feel like not taking the everyday things for granted.

After all, life is precious.

Megan Robinson, 26 January 2010.