Movie critics toss around words like "heartbreaking" way too easily.
    In the case of "Precious," though, it’s a well-earned description.
This drama is intense and brutal, yes, but it’s ultimately full of hope and humanity.
    Teenager Precious lives a life of constant torment. She is stuck in a dark, hell-hole of an apartment with her cruel mother; even as a film viewer, you feel the suffocation.
    She is illiterate. She is obese. She is pregnant, for the second time, again by a rape perpetrated by her father.
    Everywhere, it seems, people either abuse or ignore her.
    And then, in bits of small kindnesses from a teacher, from fellow students, she begins to make tiny steps toward rising above. The character’s victories are not jubilant, movie-happy-ending ones, they’re small, and mitigated by tragedy.
    As Precious, Gabourey Sidibe manages to convey the character’s anguish even behind the character’s protective stoicism. The scene when she finally breaks down and expresses all her pain will make you cry, no question.
    No performance was more of a revelation this year than comedian Mo’Nique’s as Precious’ monster of a mother. She conveys a coiled rage even in stillness, as the character sits in a chair and watches TV. The role is rich — she gets to put on a mask of pleasantness when a welfare workers visit, she gets to have her own revelation scene at the end — and Mo’Nique rings every nuance out of it.
    What’s striking about the movie is that it doesn’t slide into melodrama. Credit must go to director Lee Daniels and to screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher, who adapted the novel "Push" by Sapphire.
    Fletcher grew up in Waterford, and his script is an absolute marvel. He creates a propulsive narrative even as he makes sure that each character has depth and layers. And Fletcher reworked elements of Sapphire’s novel — including sequences where Precious finding refuge in a fantasy world when things get too traumatic — that add so much to the piece.
    What did you think of "Precious"?