Lollipop review: This socially aware film is maddening, urgent viewing
Lollipop
Director
:
Daisy-May Hudson
Cert
:
15A
Genre
:
Drama
Starring
:
Posy Sterling, Idil Ahmed, TerriAnn Cousins, Tegan-Mia, Stanley Rhoads, Luke Howitt, Aliyah Abdi, Johanna Allitt
Running Time
:
1 hr 40 mins
Daisy-May Hudson's award-winning career as a film-maker and journalist began in 2015 with Half Way, a chronicle of her family's experience of unexpected homelessness. Lollipop, her first scripted feature, builds on that documentary's poignant account of the challenges faced by a single mum and the family's maddening encounters with bureaucracy.
We're not sure why Molly (played with fraying precision by Posy Sterling) has served four months in prison, but her attempts to chart a path back to normalcy are unjustifiably frustrating. Her longed-for reunion with her two children is spoiled when only her daughter arrives, and then only for a minute.
In common with the frustrated hero of
I, Daniel Blake
, her pleas for suitable accommodation are met with institutional indifference. She's informed that, because of her incarceration, she's 'intentionally homeless'.
Unlike the unfailingly polite hero of
Ken Loach
's film, the volatile, fiercely maternal Molly snaps back and breaks the suffocating rules. That might qualify as a fatal flaw were it not for the sometime support of Sylvie, Molly's troubled, agoraphobic mother (TerriAnn Cousins), or Amina (Idil Ahmed), a loyal childhood chum navigating her own housing crisis.
READ MORE
A karaoke sequence in a cramped bedroom is emblematic of Molly's determination and, ultimately, her small, fragile demands for a dignified life.
Which year did Marty not visit?
1885
1955
2015
2055
What was Clint Eastwood's first film as director?
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Play Misty for Me
Firefox
Bird
Who is not a sibling?
Macaulay
Kieran
Rory
Benji
The actor playing the title character of which film was actually born in the US?
Klute (1971)
The Mask (1994)
Dudley Do-Right (1999)
Green Lantern (2011)
What is the last Pixar film to win the best animated feature Oscar?
Soul
Onward
Coco
Inside Out
Which is the odd period out?
Ms Weld
Dan Aykroyd in Dragnet
Ms Squibb
Christina Ricci in The Addams Family
Who was not portrayed by Steph?
Ally
Lee
Patrizia
Breathless
Which is the odd one out?
Harrison Ford's other profession
2024 Palme d'Or winner
Todd Haynes's notorious early short
Halloween and Escape from New York
Who is about to succeed, among many, many others, James Whale, Terence Fisher and Kenneth Branagh?
Guillermo del Toro
Ari Aster
David Lowery
Robert Eggers
Whose daughter fought the Triffids?
Alison Steadman
Thora Hird
Patricia Routledge
Margaret Rutherford
The film-making is appropriately restrained but effective: the cinematographer Jaime Ackroyd opts for natural lighting and unshowy hand-held camerawork. Several of the selection of the film's music supervisor, Connie Farr – Body Groove by Architechs, Talkin' the Hardest by Giggs – are a decade old, evoking a freer and easier time for the beleaguered heroine.
With Lollipop, Hudson has staked a significant claim in the rich terrain of Britain's socially conscious, kitchen-sink milieu. There's no triumphalism here, but there's enough grit and community spirit to coalesce into a decent outcome. Maddening and urgent viewing, minus the doom.
In cinemas from Friday, June 13th
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