Lionsgate gave the film a limited release in North America on November 6, 2009, with an expanded release on November 20. Precious received widespread critical acclaim; the performances of Sidibe and Mo'Nique, the story, and its message were highly praised. The film was a box office success, earning over $63 million on a $10 million budget.[1]
Despite her mother's insistence to get on welfare, Precious goes to the location of the alternative school and enrolls. She meets her new teacher, Ms. Blu Rain, as well as several other girls who all come from troubled backgrounds and are looking to get their GED to advance their educations. Precious's life begins to turn around when she slowly starts to learn to read and write with the help of Ms. Rain and finds herself inspired by her. While she learns, she starts to meet with social worker Ms. Weiss, who learns about the sexual assault in the household when Precious reveals who fathered her children. One day, while telling a story in class, Precious's water breaks and she is rushed to the hospital. She gives birth to a healthy baby boy named Abdul and is acquainted with a nursing assistant named John McFadden, who shows her kindness. While in the hospital, Precious writes letters to Ms. Rain through her notebook that is taken to and from her by Joann, one of the girls in her class. Once discharged from the hospital, Precious returns home where Mary is sitting, presumably waiting for her. Mary asks to hold Abdul, but when Precious's back is turned, she purposely drops Abdul who cries upon impact. Mary attacks Precious, angrily declaring Precious's revelation about the abuse has resulted in termination of welfare payments. After Mary and Precious fight, Precious throws her against a wall, retrieves Abdul, and flees the apartment. After falling down the stairs, Precious and Abdul are nearly killed when Mary deliberately tries to drop her television set on them from the top of a stairwell. Precious eventually breaks into her school classroom for shelter. When Ms. Rain discovers Precious and Abdul sleeping the next morning, she frantically calls local shelters looking for a safe place for Precious and Abdul to live, but they end up staying with Ms. Rain and her live-in girlfriend for the holiday. The next morning, Ms. Rain takes Precious and Abdul to find assistance. Precious is able to continue her schooling while raising Abdul in a halfway house.
The Story Of A Porn Filmmaker Mo
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John Anderson of Variety said "to simply call it harrowing or unsparing doesn't quite cut it," having felt that the film is "courageous and uncompromising, a shaken cocktail of debasement and elation, despair and hope."[45] Anderson cited Carey's performance as "pitch perfect" and Patton's role as Ms. Blu Rain as "disarming."[45] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly praised Carey's performance, describing it as having been "an authentically deglammed compassion" and praised the film for capturing "how a lost girl rouses herself from the dead" and for Daniels showing "unflinching courage as a filmmaker by going this deep into the pathologies that may still linger in the closets of some impoverished inner-city lives."[46] Gleiberman described the film as being a movie "that makes you think, 'There but for the grace of God go I.' [...] It's a potent and moving experience, because by the end you feel you've witnessed nothing less than the birth of a soul", and felt that the "final scene of revelation" between Sidibe's and Mo'Nique's characters was strong enough to be able to leave viewers "tearful, shaken, [and] dazed with pity and terror."[46] He identified how Daniels uses one of the rich scenes created by Fletcher to position Mo'Nique in a painful confrontation with Sidibe that results in a masterful and thought-provoking performance that delivers the final "push" needed by Sidibe: "The more Precious tries to get away from her mother, the more she's pulled back".[46]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times praised Mo'Nique and Sidibe's performances.[47] Ebert described Mo'Nique's performance as being "frighteningly convincing" and felt that "the film is a tribute to Sidibe's ability to engage our empathy" because she "completely creates the Precious character." He noted that Carey and Patton "are equal with Sidibe in screen impact."[47] Ebert praised Daniels because, rather than casting the actors for their names, "he was able to see beneath the surface and trust that they had within the emotional resources to play these women, and he was right."[47] Betsey Sharkey, of the Los Angeles Times described the film as being a "rough-cut diamond... [A] rare blend of pure entertainment and dark social commentary, it is a shockingly raw, surprisingly irreverent and absolutely unforgettable story."[48] Claudia Puig of USA Today said that while there are "melodramatic moments" in the film, the cast gives "remarkable performances" to show audiences the film's "inspiring message."[49] Peter Travers, of Rolling Stone called Mo'Nique "dynamite," a performance that "tears at your heart."[32]
Critic Jack Mathews wrote: "Without being familiar with the source material, you really have no idea how much work went into the adaptation or how well it was done.... 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire'... First-time screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher did yeoman's work turning Sapphire's graphic, idiomatic novel into a coherent and inspiring story about the journey of an abused Harlem teenager."[53]
Erin Aubry Kaplan wrote on Salon.com that the question posed by the film is how to assess the "hopeless story of a ghetto teen... in the Age of Obama." She went on to say that "'Precious' proves you don't always have to choose between artistic and commercial success; the film's first opening weekend was record-breaking. It's a sign how much we needed to tell this story. And, perhaps, how many stories there are left to tell."[54]
A. O. Scott identified the script's precise use of force and adept use of language, including a memorable line created by Fletcher for the adaptation: a "risky, remarkable film adaptation, written by Geoffrey Fletcher, the facts of Precious's life are also laid out with unsparing force (though not in overly graphic detail). But just as Push achieves an eloquence that makes it far more than a fictional diary of extreme dysfunction, so too does Precious avoid the traps of well-meaning, preachy lower-depths realism. It howls and stammers, but it also sings...Inarticulate and emotionally shut down, her massive body at once a prison and a hiding place, Precious is also perceptive and shrewd, possessed of talents visible only to those who bother to look. At its plainest and most persuasive, her story is that of a writer discovering a voice. 'These people talked like TV stations I didn't even watch,' she remarks of Ms. Rain and her lover (Kimberly Russell), displaying her awakening literary intelligence even as she marvels at the discovery of her ignorance."[55]
Conversely, reflecting the transformation from script to screen, Dana Stevens of Slate disagreed with Gleiberman's suggestion that the "film makes you think" and argued that the film's "eagerness" to "drag" the audience "through the lower depths of human experience" leaves little space for independent "conclusions". Stevens noted that, while the film is about improvement and self-actualization, "it wields an awfully large cudgel", in contrast to Scott's view of balance: "unsparing force (though not in overly graphic detail)". Perhaps sharing Mathews's view regarding the daunting challenge of adapting the harsh story of Push, Stevens observed that "Daniels and Fletcher no doubt intended for their film to lend a voice to the kind of protagonist too often excluded from American movie screens: a poor, black, overweight single mother from the inner city."[56]
Precious also received some negative responses from critics. Writing for the New York Press, Armond White compared the film to the landmark but controversial The Birth of a Nation (1915) as "demeaning the idea of black American life," calling it "an orgy of prurience" and the "con job of the year."[57] He further characterized the source novel as a relic of 1990s identity politics and noted that the film "casts light-skinned actors as kind [...] and dark-skinned actors as terrors." In two separate articles, writers for The New York Times cited White's article as the most powerful negative review of Precious, adding that in a recent interview he had remarked that the film's popularity is a result of the "fact" that "black pathology sells."[58] Courtland Milloy, of The Washington Post said Precious was "a film of prurient interest that has about as much redeeming social value as a porn flick."[59] David Edelstein, of New York Magazine commented that, while the film has "elements" that are "powerful and shocking," he felt the movie was "programmed", and that the film had "its own study guide."[60] Keith Uhlich of Time Out New York felt that the film did not live up to its "long hype", and felt that it was "bewildering" to discover the film's praise at the Sundance Film Festival, because Uhlich characterized the film as having "shrug-worthiness."[61]Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian that the film catalogues a "horrendous, unending nightmare of abuse" and then abruptly turns into something resembling the 1980s musical Fame. Bradshaw commended the film's acting and energy, but said it was not quite the "transcendent masterpiece" some had made it out to be.[62] Sukhdev Sandhu wrote in The Daily Telegraph that he found the film "a dispiriting mix of cliché and melodrama," although he acknowledged that Precious does feature some superb acting.[63]
Miloš is a semi-retired pornstar who lives in Belgrade with his wife, Marija, and their six-year-old son, Petar. His brother Marko is a corrupt police officer who envies Miloš's life and is sexually attracted to Marija. Marija is curious about her husband's feelings towards his past and is concerned about the family's income. Lejla, a former co-star, offers Miloš a starring role in an art film directed by Vukmir, an independent pornographer who wishes to cast Miloš for his powerful erection. Having already caught Petar watching one of his films and not informed of the details of Vukmir's film, Miloš is hesitant to participate and continue his career but accepts to secure his family's financial future. While meeting Vukmir, Miloš passes a bald man and his entourage, regarding them warily. 2ff7e9595c