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Will Lee Daniels’ ‘Precious’ be the this year’s ‘Slumdog’
The Austin Film Festival has a knack for finding a low-budget, underdog movie and helping it along its merry road to Oscardom. Last year, the Little Movie That Could was director Danny Boyle’s ‘Slumdog Millionaire,’ which ended up winning eight Oscars, including best picture.
This year, it’s ‘Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire.’
Like ‘Slumdog,’ it won the prestigious People’s Choice Award in September at the Toronto International Film Festival. It also won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
And although it’s too early to predict Oscar nominations, ‘Precious’ has a good shot at snagging a few.
Director Lee Daniels, a producer on the Oscar-winning ‘Monster’s Ball,’ has brought to the screen a moving tale of an overweight Harlem teenager, Claireece Precious Jones, who is pregnant for the second time and is kicked out of school.
At home, Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) has to cope with an abusive mother who thinks she’s too stupid to be wasting time on an education. And when Precious is invited to attend an alternative school, her mother (played by Mo’Nique) does everything she can to keep her at home.
With superb storytelling skills, Daniels shows us all about Precious — and it’s hard not to be appalled. She is sullen, uncommunicative and manipulative. And when she steals a bucket of chicken and eats all of it and then throws up, well … let’s just say she’s less than attractive.
But we begin to see how wrong our previous judgments were, when Precious begins to reveal her secrets to a compassionate social worker (played with subtlety by an almost-unrecognizable Mariah Carey).
As with ‘Slumdog,’ we also discover hope amid the horror.
‘Precious’ will be getting a big media push when it arrives at regular theaters later this year. The rollout will probably be gradual, with an East or West Coast premiere in November and a wider release in December, when it is tentatively scheduled to open in Austin.
Entertainment powerhouses Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry have signed on as executive producers of ‘Precious,’ and Winfrey has said she plans to launch a promotional blitz on her television show and in her magazine.
Such help will assuredly boost box-office prospects. But ‘Precious’ can stand on its own merits when awards season arrives early next year.
‘Precious’ screens at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Paramount.
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