Director – Daisy-May Hudson – 2024 – UK – Cert. 15 – 100m
*****
After four months in prison, a young woman must deal with the UK’s social services to regain custody of her kids – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 13th
East Londoner Molly (Posy Sterling) leaves prison following a four-month sentence to discover that her two kids Ava, 11 (Tegan-Mia Stanley Rhoads) and Leo, 5 (Luke Howitt) have been taken into care because her alcoholic mum Sylvie (TeriAnne Cousins from Silver Haze, Sasha Polak, 2023) couldn’t cope with them. This means the kids have been taken into care by social services, and in order to get them back, Molly has to have a roof over her head. Alas, while she was detained, the council have taken her home off her.
She finds herself trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea – she can’t get her kids back until she has a suitable home, and she can’t get a suitable home because, until she gets her kids back, she will only be offered accommodation suitable for a single homeless woman. For the time being, she lives out of a tent.
The impulsive Molly worsens her own situation when, during a supervised visit, she abducts her kids and flees with them on the train to the wilds of the countryside. Their existence is blissful for a few days, but then the authorities catch up with her.
Now she has to go through the lengthy bureaucratic process to legally get her kids back, a seemingly impossible challenge to which she seems ill-suited.
There is, however, an unexpected bright spot on the horizon: on a visit to the social, she runs into her old schoolfriend Amina (Idil Ahmed) who is currently living in a homeless person’s hostel with her young daughter Mya (Aliya Abdi). Despite the difficulties of her own situation, Amina is not only a born optimist but also far more grounded than the impulsive Molly, and will come to provide the very necessary support Molly needs to get back on track.
This writer is of the opinion that in most cases, the success of a film is down to 85% script and 10% casting. However, in this particular instance, casting may be more significant than that. First-time director Hudson, who has had first-hand experience of being homeless in the UK, worked with award-winning casting director Lucy Pardee (Aftersun, Charlotte Wells, 2022; Rocks, Sarah Gavron, 2019; American Honey, Andrea Arnold, 2016) in finding a mixed cast of professional actors and non-actors to populate the film. Although Hudson’s script went through a great deal of work, as a director she relies heavily on improvisation so while there’s a solid foundation there, much of what you see on the screen has developed from the script as a starting point.
Sterling, one of the professional actresses, is a revelation in the lead role. You completely believe her as this woman out of her depth, struggling to get her kids back. Equally impressive is Idil Ahmed as Amina, a Londoner of Somali heritage, who actually only auditioned because her daughter Aliya Abdi wanted to test for the part of Mya following a casting tweet by Pardee to the Somali community. Both mother and daughter are perfect in their onscreen roles. The two kids playing Molly’s children, Tegan-Mia Stanley Rhoads and Luke Howitt, are also terrific.
In addition, TeriAnne Cousins delivers a nuanced portrait of an alcoholic mother recently bereaved of her partner who can barely cope with the task of looking out for her (now-adult) child. The eponymous Lollipop is Sylvie’s nickname for Molly, in case you were wondering. Sherma Polidore-Perrins who plays a pregnant social work manager – a strange echo of the single mum-to-be due in three months police captain (Sophie Guillemin) in When Autumn Falls (François Ozon, 2024), which is almost certainly coincidental since both films were in production at the same time – is not only a real life family lawyer but was also a legal consultant on the film.
The film highlights the problems of people navigating the UK’s welfare system, alongside the difficulties faced by those working within the system trying to do a good job when it would seem that the system in which they work is not fit for purpose. If that makes the film sound dry, it really isn’t: Molly’s plight will draw you in and the people in her world, be they friends and family or the hands-tied social services professionals with whom she has to deal, will keep your attention.
You may wonder, however, as I did, exactly what was Molly in prison for in the first place – we are never told, and it might, perhaps, have shed further light on her character. It’s also worthy of note that all the characters here are female, with one exception – Molly’s younger child.
Altogether, a striking debut.
Lollipop is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, June 13th.
Trailer: