Hamilton

August 22 - September 15

• My Home
• News
• Find A Film
  • - Big Nights
• Screening Schedule

Ladybird, Ladybird

This is a fictionalised account of the true story of a working-class woman, abused as a child, who has her six children, by five different men, taken away from her by the Social Services. The woman is not considered so much a bad mother as a bad bet by the social workers concerned - what with a court order against her after a fire in her flat and a history of attracting violent lovers. She also has a temper that does not endear her to anyone trying to sort out her case. The film is not an attack on the hard-pressed social services but a plea that there should be a better understanding of the cases of such women, often given little or no chance to prove themselves as reliable mothers and providers. At its center is an astonishingly passionate and arresting performance from Crissy Rock, a stand-up comedian acting for the first time, and a portrait of contemporary Britain that drives home a few good necesary lessons - like the thought that humanity and even well-meaning bureacracy are often irreconcilable. Ladybird, Ladybird is very much a political film with its heart on its sleeve, written by Rona Munro with great skill and directed by Ken Loach with his usual flair for finding large truths in small details, But it is Rock who makes it, as David Thewlis set up Naked's triumph for Mike Leigh. - Derek Malcolm, The Guardian, 22/2/94