Review: Precious (4/5); Edge of Darkness (2/5); Adoration (3.5/5); 8.5 Hours (1/5)

Precious is a film about a diamond in the rough. That diamond is our eponymous hero, Clareece ‘Precious’ Jones (Gabourney Sidibe), a 16-year-old of elephantine bearing and skin almost midnight black. The rough is not the Harlem of 1987 where she lives, but her family home – a den of suppurating poison. Precious’s story, then, if there was any doubt, is how she finds her sparkle.
The first thing you notice about Precious is not her weight but her eyes. First-time actress Gabourney Sidibe glowers upon the world with default suspicion. Precious’s glare is a fortress trying to shield her from the world. No such luck. She is pregnant for the second time by her absentee father. We flashback to his rape of her, and the camera watches uncomfortably the springs bounce on the bed, while he whispers “Daddy loves you.”
Her mother Mary (Mo’Nique) is a hectoring harridan. When not vegetating on the couch watching TV with the shades drawn, she specialises in emotional and physical abuse. She demolishes her daughter’s self esteem like a human wrecking ball. “I should have aborted your motherf**king ass,” she tells her. She displays jealousy towards her boyfriend’s affections for his own daughter. She refers to Precious’s daughter as Mongo – a child born with Down’s syndrome. When Mary doesn’t get what she wants, she throws everything at Precious’s head but the kitchen sink.
If this sounds like kitchen-sink filmmaking, that’s because it is. Social realism has rarely scratched the glossy gaze of American romantic-realism. If the thrust of American myth-making is towards the dream of betterment and escape, its films rarely want to remind you of what lies beneath. Precious rummages there fearlessly and comes up fresh. Though even its director, Lee Daniels, feels the need for escape.
Sometimes he sprinkles a little magic as if the grit becomes too grinding. We see Precious lying on the ground after various moments of abuse, and we travel inward into fantasy where she dreams of being a pop star or a movie idol, feather boa’ed with adoring crowds. Then there is the moment after she is forced to quit school due to her pregnancy. She cannot read or write and is on the verge of joining an Each One Teach One programme. She stands tentatively outside the classroom and the doorway shimmers with gold. It’s as if she has entered a magical realm. And in some ways, she has. Her teacher is called Blu Rain (Paula Patton) and she is all sunshine. Precious takes her first step up in life, but doesn’t have to climb the desk and shout O Captain! My Captain! Thanks goodness for that.
Gabourney Sidibe is the unlikeliest of screen presences. Her face is largely inexpressive. She makes John Candy look like a snack. And yet we are transfixed because her Precious is a real character who battles against the world – not for a large piece of it, for just a little dignity.
How refreshing, too, to watch an American film where the overweight African American is not there as a punchline. Precious might be a punchbag for abuse, but she gets to hit back. Daniels doesn’t sugarcoat her story. Compared to the African-American landmark work A Killer of Sheep, Precious might look a tad manufactured. But in its humane and compassionate qualities, it feels honest.
The story’s emotional arc aims for an upswing. But just when you think things are getting better, it faces you with reality. There are times when anything could cheer you up. Even the sight of Mariah Carey, who appears without make-up. She is all low-key understanding as Precious’s social worker. But she’s no diva compared to Mo’Nique, who takes over the stage. She has a remarkable scene where she uncorks Mary’s ignorance and insecurity to show how she is a damaged little girl herself. “That was my man and he wanted my daughter and that’s why I hated her,” she says. It is a powerful moment, one that allows us to understand and sympathise with a monster. Precious allows us to find compassion not just for its underprivileged hero, but for its villains too.
Unlike Precious, Edge of Darkness is all about what a father will do for his daughter. In Die Hard 4, Bruce Willis got shot of the slippers and went semi-automatic to save his daughter. In Taken, Liam Neeson went gun crazy for his teen. And now here’s Mel Gibson, a Boston detective investigating the murder of his daughter. Dads rock, sort of. The protocol in family vengeance is dad is divorced. If he were still married to mom, no doubt she would talk sense into him.
Gibson doesn’t look like the lethal weapon of before. He’d growl at you now if you asked him to dislocate that shoulder. His leathery face is dulled like an old boot. When he starts kicking, he does so with weariness. No wonder the editor gives him a helping hand. Gibson’s Thomas Craven, though, is no coward. He discovers his daughter was an activist and her death leads to the doorway of a shady multinational. Danny Huston plays the oily corporate boss. Anybody who wears a suit that smooth is up to no good. Meanwhile, Ray Winstone skulks about duplicitously, a government agent in charge of a cover-up.
The film, directed by Casino Royale’s Martin Campbell, is a reworking of his 1980s award-winning British TV series. The plot involves illegal nukes, shady senators, and Alexander Litvinenko-style radiation poisoning. (Don’t drink the milk, Mel.) Campbell marries the vengeance movie with the conspiracy thriller but doesn’t shake anything new out of it. In fact, it made me yearn for the swift sadism of his last Bond film. The paranoia won’t make you look over your shoulder: characters keep telling us how frightened they are; I suppose if they keep saying it, it must be true.
Atom Egoyan’s Adoration is a drama full of satisfying smarts. But it doesn’t wriggle under your skin. The film’s many layers are deftly assembled to form an intelligent cultural portrait: the role the internet plays in our lives, and the prejudice and ignorance embedded in so-called liberal society. Devon Bostick plays Simon, a highschool student, who turns an ordinary school assignment into a controversial project. He concocts a fictional drama that rewrites the past of his dead parents so that his Arab father was a would-be airplane bomber. He pretends it’s real and has the complicity of his teacher Sabine (Arsinée Khanjian). But the story spills onto the web and into their lives.
Egoyan’s visual style is measured beautifully. He glides fiction alongside reality and examines how the web transports fiction as fact and how readily we buy into stories. Scott Speedman as Simon’s uncle is a lovely, soft presence. He becomes entangled in the strands of the story and transforms under its examination.
8.5 Hours is a turgid multi-strand drama from writer/director Brian Lally. It’s an unintentional farce, playing out on screen like the rant of a demented, ultra-right Catholic bigot. On paper, it is supposed to be an examination of Celtic Tiger Ireland but Lally goes to work with a bulldozer. This is a day in the life of four Celtic cub stereotypes: two of them snort coke at their desks; everybody seems to be cheating on their partners; one will do anything to get a mortgage for a Dublin 4 apartment, while two men who are in straight relationships are having secret gay sex in toilets and car parks. Obviously, the Celtic Tiger makes them do it. The film denounces without any insight or sympathy for its cardboard characters. Its nastiness is without reprieve. There are more fundamental problems, however. Lally sees no need for plot mechanics or character development. It is edited without rhythm and the film is so padded you could insulate your attic with it. It should be put in a box and left there.