The plot of Lee Daniels' *Precious*, based on Sapphire's novel *Push*, is by now familiar. In the bleak, impoverished Harlem of the late 1980s, a sixteen-year-old Black girl who is obese, abused by her father, humiliated by her mother, barely literate, with two children born of incest (the older has Down syndrome) and HIV-positive, manages—almost miraculously—to pull her life together and give it direction. Precious seizes a dignity and identity that, perhaps, despite her name, she has never truly possessed in her brief, already deeply wounded life.
Within this story—not true but tragically plausible (one in which the viewer finds himself asking again and again: what else?)—there is a pivotal scene, a moment when this adolescent reveals, surprisingly, a strength and determination that seem extraordinary.
The choice Precious makes that is truly mature and courageous is not simply rebellion against her mother, a woman so desperate that in her twisted rage she accuses her daughter of "stealing her man" (who is, of course, the girl's own father). Her rebellion takes shape in the decision to enroll in an alternative school, thus resisting a life of resentment, poverty, and ignorance that her surroundings seemed to have already sealed her into. (After her second pregnancy, Precious is expelled from public school by the principal, who does not abandon her but, in a surreal intercom conversation—the woman standing in the street, the girl at home—gives her information about the program that will change her life).
Even in this moment the adolescent shows a toughness she had not revealed before (in the film's opening scenes, hatred, mockery, and violence seem almost to slide right off her), but Precious's true, authentic determination emerges later, when she (quietly, without fanfare) stands up to her new teacher. It is Miss Rain, the intelligent, fascinating, and discreet woman who, teaching her to read and write with stubborn, determined affection, finally allows Precious to believe in herself and to love herself.
The scene happens over the phone. Precious sits on her hospital bed after giving birth to her second child, Abdul. Miss Rain pushes for a solution that few would condemn: Precious has just begun to take hold of her life, she needs to finish school, graduate, go to university, she is only sixteen—perhaps the best answer is adoption (the older child lives with her grandmother). But the girl will not hear it ("not even dogs give away their children"). Precious wants to fight back against the hatred and degradation she was born into, yes—but she wants to do it with them, with her children, loving them and keeping them close. She will do this not only with little Abdul but with her firstborn, the daughter with Down syndrome, who finally stops being "Mongo" (what Precious calls her through almost the entire film) and becomes simply a child. Simply a child.
Giulia Galeotti, 2011