52 Films by Women Vol 9. 9. Lollipop (Director: Daisy-May Hudson)
Daisy-May Hudson’s feature debut, Lollipop, is an example of the female gaze turned solely on women. Adult men exist only in the background, for example as security or coach drivers. The only characters who speak are women, either representing the system or running away from responsibility. In her predominantly-London-set drama, Hudson stages scenes naturalistically, often pointing her camera at her protagonist, Molly (Posy Sterling), a young mother fresh out of prison trying to get custody of her two children Ava (Tegan-Mia Stanley Rhoads) and Leo (Luke Howitt), while opposition voices are heard out of shot; Hudson uses shot-reverse-shot sparingly. The stylised-naturalistic combo results in abrasive story telling. Set pieces butt into one another rather achieve a cumulative effect. To her credit, Hudson’s version of light and shade isn’t straight forward; Ava is a particularly demanding daughter. The film features a plaintively comic intonation of the line, ‘goodbye forever’, spoken by a young boy, whom Hudson makes clear hasn’t acquired negative masculine traits.
We are not told why Molly went to prison but after four
months she is released. While inside, her alcoholic and grieving mother, Sylvie
(TerriAnn Cousins) gave up the children to foster care. In spite of Molly being
told this, she naïvely thinks she can just reclaim them as if they were
belongings in a lock-up garage. Social services from a fictitious London
borough put the children’s interests first. Molly is left living in a tent,
promised only supervised visits, but what she lacks in resources – only £200
saved up - she makes up for in determination.
Hudson majors on Molly’s distress, both spoken and implied.
At a wake for her mother’s late partner, Rodney, Sylvie goads her to sing,
‘just like you did when you were a little girl’. Sylvie is a working-class
stage mother turned up to eleven who can’t resist annotating her performance as
Molly falters through a version of ‘Amazing Grace’. For every line sung, and
while Molly takes a breath, Sylvie goads her and then addresses the crowd: ‘go
on’, ‘ain’t she lovely?’ Throughout the song, Hudson’s camera is trained on
Molly’s face, as she obliges her mother and withholds her own outrage. Throughout
the film, music is used in a variety of ways. To silence a character, to
distract them – Leo told to sing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ while Molly
convinces Ava to board a coach. As a means of celebration, Molly dancing with a
friend. To psyche up characters to act. Both Hudson’s unsubtle use of close-ups
and music draw attention away from the story and towards her technique. We are
told rather than shown.
The stylization doesn’t just extend to the restricted
viewpoint. Scenes feel excessively telescoped. On one supervised visit, Molly
takes her children to the park. However, the supervising social worker almost
immediately wants to go to the toilet and says the children have to go. Molly’s
mother is also present, having been coaxed out of the house, and wearing
sunglasses to boot, to give the impression of a normal family. While Sylvie
takes the social worker to her house nearby, Molly seizes an opportunity.
‘Let’s play a game of hide and seek,’ she tells her children, though Ava is
sceptical. Hudson sells the scene by
presenting the social worker as a one-note grotesque, a mouthpiece for the
system and her bladder. Hudson may focus on women, but her empathy isn’t universal.
One of the film’s strengths is the way in which characters
enter Molly’s screen space and provide a calming influence. During a trip to
social services, Molly is reunited with her childhood friend, Amina (Idil
Ahmed) who works there. Hudson allows the two women to share the frame; Amina
excels at calming Molly. Amina too has a complicated history as Molly later
discovers after Amina’s car fails to start and Amina refuses to allow Molly to
take her daughter Mya (Aliyah Abdi) to the park. (‘Just leave it.’) Molly
discovers that Amina and Mya live in a homeless hostel after the family were
evicted from their home. Amina’s husband is out of the picture; his absence is
never fully explained. While Amina is ashamed, Molly couldn’t be less
judgmental. After all, we observe, Amina has a bed. However, Amina can’t raise
a deposit to rent a flat and can barely make ends meet. She does however give
the film narrative direction.
Council workers deliver a constant stream of bad news to
Molly, telling her that she made herself intentionally homeless by going to
prison and is not eligible for assistance. Even when told she is eligible, it
is only to a one-bedroom flat. ‘How am I supposed to get my kids back if I
don’t have somewhere to live?’ she asks. The dialogue accurately reflects
council worker speak. You sense that Hudson covertly recorded conversations
between applicants and council staff to get the phraseology right. Later, Sylvie
is told that her house is unsuitable for Ava, Leo and Molly as it only has two
bedrooms. We note the contrast between what is deemed acceptable and what
exists; Amina and Mya share a room but receive no social help.
The film’s realism is selective. Whilst spending the night
in a tent, the children don’t complain about a lack of food or having to go to
the toilet in the open. Hudson doesn’t present Molly objectively, rather judges
her for her love for her children. By contrast, Sylvie doesn’t love Molly. She
worships her late partner and alcohol more.
Molly’s countryside adventure is short-lived. She is
arrested in a corner shop; Molly appears not to shop in named supermarkets. The
children are taken into foster care, while Molly is advised to get a lawyer.
Molly never achieves an epiphany. Rather, she is wary about
acting in a way that would enable her to be judged as an unfit mother. She
takes a call from her children’s foster mother after Ava locks herself in the
bathroom. ‘I’m bleeding,’ Ava whimpers. Later, Molly turns up at the foster
house with some sanitary pads. ‘I don’t want to see you. Go away,’ Ava tells
her, before counting down. The hatred that Ava expresses is incredibly cruel
but utterly believable. She is a wounded pubescent lashing out. ‘You said you
would take us home. Where’s home?’ she asks. Molly is careful not to respond
with equal anger.
Hudson sensitively portrays Sylvie’s alcoholism, not as a
habit that can be dropped, rather a default response to daily challenges. In an
early scene, Molly challenges Sylvie to drink up; her mother consumes a full
glass whilst barely pausing to taste it. In a later scene, Molly tries to
prevent Sylvie from pouring herself a drink, as if by doing so she can rescue her.
Sylvie’s grief hovers in the background, never resolved, though Sylvie herself
is a partially comic character, whose shame – ‘everyone thinks I’m a bad
mother, I don’t want to go out’ – is presented sceptically.
There aren’t any laughs in Lollipop. Instead,
we have a ropey scene in which Molly helps Amina retrieve her £1,500 deposit,
taken by her former landlady, who lives in a comfortable middle-class house
with a ‘posh’ car. (‘She’s living it up at your expense,’ Molly concludes). The
scene isn’t entirely convincing. Kim (Andrea Lowe) has ready access to a
baseball bat. In the end, she is told to fetch her cheque book, a detail that
dates the film. Who writes cheques these days? Ina scene that passes for
comedy, the tap-dancing Leo gives up his dream of being a vet, put off by the
requirement to put his hand in a cow’s posterior.
Semi-improvised scenes give the film an edge. For much of
its length, Lollipop is an uncomfortable watch, not least when
Molly, Ava and Leo perform karaoke as a family, dressed in tinsel. Hudson makes
the point that councils can’t be relied upon to provide help for women such as
Molly. Ultimately, the private rental market provides what opportunities there
are. The film belies the myth that as a woman in the UK, you can catastrophise
yourself into social housing. By excluding men from the film, except in references
to an abusive relationship, the film foregrounds female friendship as a force
for good and social change. In Hudson’s filmmaking, a spotlight can confer
power, and power can be asserted in other social situations, outside the world
of the film.
Reviewed at Curzon Canterbury, Westgate, Screen One,
Saturday 14 June 2025, 20:20 screening
Comments
Post a Comment