Every so often American independent cinema produces a small gem of a movie which would not have had a chance of being taken on by the Hollywood majors and would have been ruined if it had been. Precious is such a film. It is an unflinching look at a deeply traumatised life and the tentative steps towards its reclamation.

Claireece is a severely overweight teenager in Harlem, circa 1987. She is verbally and physically abused by her couch-potato mother, and sexually abused by her father, by whom she is pregnant for the second time. She is also barely literate. Grim? You bet. “I’ve never had a boyfriend,” she says tearfully at one point. But what carries the film forward is the promise of salvation through education, and Claireece’s own little flights of fancy, humorously and beautifully rendered in heightened colour. Claireece is enrolled into a special programme to improve literacy, has her baby, and takes the first faltering steps towards the ownership of her life. The film has the same uplifting quality as another about fulfilment through education, the wonderful Stand and Deliver from 1988.

Director Lee Daniels strikes the right balance between oppressive reality and imaginative optimism, and some lines of dialogue are laugh-out-loud funny. Art direction is spot on, cinematography fine, sound quality not always. The cast is uniformly excellent: the dynamic exchanges between Claireece and her new classmates are caught beautifully; Lenny Kravitz and Mariah Carey contribute praiseworthy performances; Mo’Nique as the mother convincingly veers between sadistic venom and contrition; and in the lead debut actress Gabourey Sidibe is quietly stunning. See it.