Daisy-May Hudson’s award-winning career as a film-maker and journalist began in 2015 with Half Way, a chronicle of her family’s experience of unexpected homelessness. Lollipop, her first scripted feature, builds on that documentary’s poignant account of the challenges faced by a single mum and the family’s maddening encounters with bureaucracy.
We’re not sure why Molly (played with fraying precision by Posy Sterling) has served four months in prison, but her attempts to chart a path back to normalcy are unjustifiably frustrating. Her longed-for reunion with her two children is spoiled when only her daughter arrives, and then only for a minute.
In common with the frustrated hero of I, Daniel Blake, her pleas for suitable accommodation are met with institutional indifference. She’s informed that, because of her incarceration, she’s “intentionally homeless”.
Unlike the unfailingly polite hero of Ken Loach’s film, the volatile, fiercely maternal Molly snaps back and breaks the suffocating rules. That might qualify as a fatal flaw were it not for the sometime support of Sylvie, Molly’s troubled, agoraphobic mother (TerriAnn Cousins), or Amina (Idil Ahmed), a loyal childhood chum navigating her own housing crisis.
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A karaoke sequence in a cramped bedroom is emblematic of Molly’s determination and, ultimately, her small, fragile demands for a dignified life.
The film-making is appropriately restrained but effective: the cinematographer Jaime Ackroyd opts for natural lighting and unshowy hand-held camerawork. Several of the selection of the film’s music supervisor, Connie Farr – Body Groove by Architechs, Talkin’ the Hardest by Giggs – are a decade old, evoking a freer and easier time for the beleaguered heroine.
With Lollipop, Hudson has staked a significant claim in the rich terrain of Britain’s socially conscious, kitchen-sink milieu. There’s no triumphalism here, but there’s enough grit and community spirit to coalesce into a decent outcome. Maddening and urgent viewing, minus the doom.
In cinemas from Friday, June 13th
