Precious

Als der Film dessen Trailer mich gerade umgehauen hat vor ein paar Monaten auf dem Sundance-Filmfestival lief trug er noch den Namen "Push: Based on a novel by Sapphire". Devin Faraci war damals ziemlich begeistert und mitgenommen von Push, der jetzt als PRECIOUS tatsächlich in absehbarer Zeit in einige amerikanische Kinos kommen wird. Hier ein paar Auszüge aus Faracis, wie sooft, sehr anschaulicher und ehrlicher Kritik. Und im Anschluss dann die kleine Vorschau:

Clareece 'Precious' Jones is 16, can't read, is hugely obese, lives in the ghetto and is about to have her second child brought on by her father's continued rapes. She lives in 1987 Harlem, where a deteriorated school system and a community drowning in crime, ignorance and drug abuse have failed her. Just when all hope seems lost for Precious, she gets into an alternative school program where she'll learn to read and most importantly, to write - the act of putting her thoughts down in a journal and being accepted by her new teacher and fellow students has a profound change on her self esteem and every other aspect of her life.

That sounds like the makings of a simple afterschool special, but that's just the start of Push. The film is not afraid to drop bad thing after bad thing on its heroine, and by proxy us. I don't know that I've felt as emotionally battered by a film in a long time, but Push isn't just about making you cry (although it will do that); it's a probing look inside the cycles of abuse - institutional, sexual, physical, self-inflicted - that keep people down. And while the movie's angle is on urban black girls, there's a universality to it that transcends. When Precious looks in the mirror and sees a pretty, thin, blonde white girl I understand the feeling (and this isn't my confession of cross-dressing), and it's a feeling that anyone who has ever looked at themselves in a mirror and wished they were seeing something different will understand.

(...)

Push is gritty and sometimes ugly, and while it never falls into the tropes of uplifting message movies, it does offer more than a shred of optimism at the end. The cycle can be broken and there can be hope. But the movie is honest: that hope isn't easy to find, and it comes at a price. Push is a tough movie, but it might also be a great one.

Inzwischen wurde nicht nur dieses ausgesprochen schöne Poster zum Film veröffentlicht. Seit heute gibt es auch einen Trailer. Die Geschichte, die in PRECIOUS erzählt wird scheint mir so wichtig und echt zu sein, wie ich es lange nicht mehr von einem Film dachte: