Reflective Encounters

“While cold and at times uncanny, there is a quality to Paul Mas’s Precious that draws you in from its opening scenario in which a young girl commits the faux pas of involving herself in her classmates’ playground game. In some respects the film is a study of how, as children, we are unthinking in how we react to anything outside of our perceptions of normal appearance and behaviour, and how that can exponentially develop into outright cruelty.

When a new student with ASD - Émile - arrives, the student body reacts with hostility at his struggles while Julie identifies in him something of a kindred spirit. What follows is an internal back and forth between her impulse to befriend Émile versus her gradual acceptance into the world of her classmates. The main visual concept places Julie and Émile in a sea of unchanging, expressionless faces. It makes for a haunting and disorienting (yet uniquely effective) othering of its main protagonist and, by extension, the audience themselves. Less a film about bullying (for their lack of empathy, the other students are never especially vicious) than the loneliness of not being understood, there’s an understated sadness to Precious in its depiction of exclusion and the lengths we’ll go to avoid it that, if not directly relatable, will feel familiar to most.”

— Ben Mitchell