Review: Precious: based on the novel 'Push' by Sapphire (15)****

A story of endemic sexual abuse and violence carried on over decades, Lee Daniels' Precious is actually a story of hope in which an illiterate, morbidly obese teenager finds an escape route out of the slough of despond.

Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) has one child and is pregnant with her second. Her mother, a chain-smoking couch potato, verbally and physically abuses her. Her father rapes her. The unborn baby is his.

Out of this horror comes a chance for a better life. Precious is enrolled into an alternative school where time and effort is spent on giving students with a hint of potential some hope for

the future.

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Precious is a shocking, unsettling film – shocking in the matter-of-fact way it reveals the sexual abuse at the core of the story and, particularly, in the astonishing performance by Mo'Nique as the mother.

Producer turned director Daniels provides a shocking expose of life at the bottom of the barrel. It revolves around Mary (Mo'Nique), a woman too dim, too blinkered, too uncaring to observe and accept what she has allowed, even encouraged, to happen. She is jealous, resentful and bitter. It is an unforgettable performance of raw power.

The film is scattered with other high-profile performers, including a revalatory turn from Mariah Carey (I kid you not) as a social worker and Lenny Kravitz. The journey taken by Precious is one of darkness to light. Sidibe is magnificent as the wounded girl. It is a performance to be savoured in a devastating film that warms the heart as it chills the marrow.

Unmissable and bound for Oscar glory.