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Precious Our rating: Your rating:   MPAA rating: R (for child abuse including sexual assault, and pervasive language) Genre: Drama Theater release: November 06, 2009 by Lionsgate Directed by: Lee Daniels Runtime: 1 hour 49 minutes Cast: Gabourey Sidibe (Claireece "Precious" Jones), Mo'Nique (Mary), Paula Patton (Ms. Rain), Mariah Carey (Ms. Weiss), Sherri Shepherd (Cornrows), Lenny Kravitz (Nurse John) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Claireece "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is an illiterate 16-year-old junior high school student who's pregnant for the second time by her mother's boyfriend. That sentence alone tells you a lot about this film's intensity—but don't let that scare you away from this revealing and remarkable movie. 

It's 1987 in Harlem, and Precious lives with her mother, Mary (Mo'Nique), an angry welfare bum who spends her days on the couch watching game shows and soap operas, expecting Precious to wait on her hand and foot. And when Precious doesn't, or doesn't serve just so, Mary unleashes emotional and physical abuse with a filthy mouth and the nearest heavy object. It's gut-wrenching.

By day Precious is a ninth-grade student who's getting good grades despite the fact she can't read or write. When her guidance counselor discovers Precious is pregnant for the second time, she suggests she try an alternative school, Each One Teach One. Despite her mom's angry instructions to forget education and go sign up for welfare and despite the fact Precious doesn't really know what alternative means, she has a vague notion that this might be the break she's been waiting for. So she goes.

Gabourey Sidibe as Claireece 'Precious' Jones

At this new school Precious spends her days in a room with other illiterate and troubled teens under the unwaveringly stern but supportive direction of Ms. Rain (Paula Patton). In their daily assignment to journal for 15 minutes, many of these students are able to give voice to their horrific stories and tentative dreams for the future. And this handful of students forms a sort of fierce family, alternately at each other's throats and guarding each other's backs.

Regardless of all this intensity, the film offers several laugh-out-loud moments that take you off guard and give needed relief. These most often come from Precious' daydreams. When enduring unthinkable circumstances, Precious often escapes to her red-carpet fantasies, where's she's fabulous and filthy rich and hounded by adoring fans.

This resiliency is the cornerstone of the film. This is what saves it from being totally bleak. This is what amazes even more than the unthinkable realities this young woman lives with daily. Only once in a voiceover do we hear Precious talking about crying and wishing she was dead, and almost immediately she channels the same ferocity that's been unleashed on her and thinks, You know what? F--- that day.

Mo'Nique as Mary

The other thing that saves the film (which, as the title awkwardly reminds us, is based on the 1996 novel Push by Sapphire) from being an exercise in depression is the deft storytelling. Yes, we witness horrible verbal abuse. But the worst of the physical and sexual abuse is mostly implied. Though the film is staggering at times, I never found myself shutting my eyes and turning away. The filmmakers wisely knew that they lose viewers when that happens. We emotionally detach from the film, and the attempt to enlighten about real-life horrors is tainted. Lee Daniels and team dance right up to that edge but never really crossed that line (for me, at least). That they also seamlessly weave some playfulness into this intense film is also remarkable.

But these feats are overshadowed by the stellar acting. Gabourey Sidibe in her debut role as Precious is nothing short of a marvel. She conveys such anger and hardness in her face, which I only truly appreciated after seeing this exuberant young woman interviewed on Ellen. Sidibe is nothing like the understatedly fierce Precious. All the more reason for Sidibe to get some award nominations, about which there's already been much buzz.

Precious finds kindness from Ms. Rain (Paula Patton)

Stand-up comic Mo'Nique also offers an award-worthy performance as Precious' mom, Mary. We hate her. We're horrified by her. Then we pity her. The emotions she expresses and elicits are amazing. And all from a comedienne. Mariah Carey and Sherri Shepherd also give great performances, most notably for how stripped down and almost unrecognizable they are as ordinary women. The truth about incest and illiteracy and teen pregnancy isn't prettied up here. Neither are the actors.

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