★★★★½ - THE POST
- Debut feature tells a tough story superbly well -
Back in 2015, 24 year old film-maker Daisy-May Hudson completed a self-funded and crowd-sourced documentary called Half Way.
Half Way documented the journey of Daisy-May, her mother and her younger sister, after their rental home in east London was sold out from under them. The family tried for months to find another rental they could afford, but eventually had to accept defeat and ask for emergency accommodation. Which turned out to be two rooms in a decommissioned army barracks, with a kitchen and bathroom shared with three other families.
Daisy-May had never made a film before, but she started to make a record of her mum and sister's day to day life, as they engaged with the local council and state agencies, just to try to find somewhere for their working family to live. Hudson filmed and edited for three years, raising money from donations as she worked, so that she could stay in control of the project. When the film was completed, she sat with it for months, uncertain whether she should even let anyone from outside her family and community see what she had witnessed.
But, when it was released, Half Way was snapped up by film festivals in the U.K and around the world, and it pretty much burned the house down wherever it played. Hudson was offered a job as a producer and director working for Vice TV in the U.K, and she became a public face in the ongoing fight for fairness and access in the warped and grotesquely unjust U.K housing crisis.
Ten years after Half Way, Hudson has completed her first feature film. And although Lollipop is an original piece of writing, it is clearly drawing on and recreating some of the stories that were uncovered in Half Way.
A young woman named Molly is released from prison after 4 months inside. The first and only thing on her mind is to be reunited with her two children - 11 year old Ava and 5 year old Leo. She left her children in the care of her own mother, where she figured they would be well looked after. But while Molly has been away, her mum has been facing her own battles, and she has put the children into state care.
So while Molly was expecting a fairly frictionless re-entry into the world and a joyous reunion with her children, she now finds herself at the mercy of the bureaucrats of Britain's various government departments. Who will decide whether she is allowed to take care of her children again, and whether she is eligible to be helped into a house to live in.
Lollipop is a pretty much flawless piece of work. While the story it tells and the subject matter could be nothing but gruelling in the hands of a lesser writer and filmmaker, Hudson keeps Molly's journey afloat and watchable, with moments of humour and lightness breaking through in all sorts of unexpected ways. And, in Posy Sterling, Hudson has a lead actor who can keep us engaged and on her side, no matter how tough and infuriating the story becomes.
Sterling had a supporting role opposite Saoirse Ronan in the extraordinary The Outrun, back in 2024, but she mainly works in theatre and television. In Lollipop, Sterling appears in every frame and brings an unerring precision and authenticity to every moment of Molly's chaotic and troubling journey. I honestly don't think I'll see a more impressive and memorable lead-performance in any film this year.
Ken Loach's Cathy Come Home and I, Daniel Blake are obvious touch-stones here. But Hudson has her own way of making a film, and she has enough confidence in her adult cast - all women - to get out of their way, and allow them to make this story their own. Lollipop is a warm, likeable, engrossing, immensely moving and fully human piece of work.
If you can find a screening of Lollipop near where you live, I reckon you'll be very happy if you make the time to see it.
- Graeme Tuckett, THE POST
Lollipop is now playing at Light House Cinema!