Lollipop (15) |Close-Up Film Review

In her first feature film director Daisy-May Hudson is really picking up the social injustice baton from Ken Loach.   

Her story of a young mother homeless and parted from her children by the system has many echoes of Loach’s famous television film Cathy Come Home.   Ten years ago Hudson made a documentary about how she and the rest of her family had been caught in the homelessness trap, so although Lollipop is a work of fiction, it has the ring of truth, which comes with personal experience and real life.

Molly (Posy Sterling) is released from prison after a four month stretch.  It was only four months but her council house was taken away from her and her children were left with her mum Sylvie (Terriann Cousins).  Mum however said she couldn’t cope, so the children were put into care. Horrifyingly in this day and age, Molly has been released from prison with a tent – no offer of support – and is sleeping rough in the park.   She can’t get her children back until she has a home but and she can’t get a suitable home when the children aren’t living with her.  A classic Catch-22 situation.  

Sterling as Molly is terrific. Her frustration when dealing with an implacable panel of apparently uncaring “care” professionals bursts into understandable fury.  Yet they are not deliberately tormenting her.  It is the system which is being so cruel.  And when foolishly but understandably, after finding she is not even allowed to be alone with them unsupervised, Molly abducts the children and takes them on a camping trip to the countryside, her situation becomes even worse, as she faces the prospect of losing her children forever.

Her only solace is her good friend Amina (Idil Ahmed) who is herself living with her young daughter in one room in a homeless hostel, which she generously shares with Molly. 

Sterling, whose experience is largely in theatre, is outstanding in this.  Terrifyingly fierce, very moving and even funny at times. Ahmed as her friend has never acted before.  The story needed two Londoners of Somali heritage. Ahmed accompanied her little girl, who wanted to audition for the film.  She was then asked to read herself and they both got cast, playing roles with which they closely identified.

Hudson very carefully researched her subject before writing the script, working with real life women in similar situations to Molly and appointing an actress (Sherma Polidore-Perrins) who is also a family law solicitor ,to advise as well as play a role in the film. 

However the fact that this story is based so closely on real life and an appallingly cruel and inflexible system is in itself shocking.   Cathy Come Home was made in 1966.   Nearly 60 years later she hasn’t come home yet.