Fridae

Vernon’s view

John Waters and Pedro Almodovar have understood in the course of making their oeuvres, that when you ramp the melodrama up to 11, you get a pretty funny comedy. All you need to do is to pile relentlessly tragedy on tragedy and suddenly the world’s smallest violin starts playing a klezmer tune, just for you.

Lee Daniels, another LGBT director, seems to hit on the same realisation as he adapts the shockingly over-dramatic novel Push, written by Sapphire. Putting his stamp on the film adaptation, Lee Daniels constructs Precious as a film based on the website known as FMYLife.

For the initiated, FMYLife is a website where people post the details of how bad their life is – hence its name “F*** my life”. Apparently the object is to garner the most sympathy votes, which readers give by clicking on the “I agree, your life sucks” hyperlink. Underneath all that sob storytelling and sympathetic back-patting is the unspoken acknowledgement that we all get our entertainment and comic kicks from listening to how bad your life is. In the parlance of FMYLife, Precious wins it all!

Watching the film, it’s apparent that however horrifying, the tragedies that happen to Precious are played for laughs because they are so exaggerated. However inspiring, her dreams (of living the high life with a character known as “Tom Cruise” in the credits), redemption and empowerment are all played for laughs because they are so exaggerated and unreal.

In the course of 2 hours, Lee Daniels proves that he can erase the boundary between melodrama and comedy, delivering high camp to us while still appealing to mainstream audiences in search of an inspiring, feel-good film. Good for him! The real star here though is Monique, who plays up her role as the evil mother with so much relish and fun, it’s infectious.

Enming’s view

"Daddy loves you". You might never hear those words the same way again after this movie. This is the story of plus-sized ghetto teenager Claireece "Precious" Jones, who dwells at home with her obnoxious mother, and was raped by her father...twice. Precious regularly regresses into worlds of fantasy, with fashion shows and imaginary lovers. What follows is an up-by-your-bootstraps inspirational tale where Precious slowly becomes a literate, responsible and empowered woman, and away from the ghetto. Such hard-luck ghetto melodramas are nothing new in American literature and film, dating back to the likes of Richard Wright's Native Son in the 1940s. 

How is she going to attain all this? Thankfully she has great friends. Her fellow students at the school she attends emanate warmth, mischief and fun that you might find yourself wanting to spend time with them too as through skilful film-making, their fears, hopes and dreams also become yours. They include a Jamaican with an accent so thick you can cut it with a knife, and a fellow bug-eyed ghetto girl who's skinny, self-confident and so sassy she writes fairy tales about herself as a beautiful princess. Cinematographer Andrew Dunn's palette helps in capturing the radiance of these characters. Paula Patton playing lesbian teacher Ms Blu Rain is cast in a golden-brown honey-coloured sheen, and as a social worker a de-glammed Mariah Carey is looking even whiter than she does on her album covers. Still, when the plight of plus-sized Precious can wring out uncontrollable water works from audiences, it is a testimony to how the film's production values triumph over its stereotyped characterisations and writing.

A master stroke of fate and timing has it that this film would be produced by Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey during the Obama administration. Will there be an era more suited to this film than now? Word has it that Perry and Winfrey were so moved by the film they agreed to get it distributed. But it may simply be that it's exactly the sort of product they have learned to package and peddle. Perry and Winfrey are self-made Afro-Americans whose powerful salesmanship rests on their mix of family values, "street cred" and feel-good inspirationalism for black audiences that would by no means offend white ones, offering visions of social mobility while acknowledging their lower-middle/working class roots. Obama won his election using tactics so similar, one might be tempted to consider that Perry and Winfrey have become American kingmakers (not too far from the truth probably). It appears director Lee Daniels and writer Geoffrey Fletcher have made the perfect movie symbol of its time.

Consensus

We agree. Precious, your life sucks!