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Ladybird Ladybird) is based on the real-life case of a
woman who grew out of a childhood of abuse and into a classic vicious circle of
cruel relationships. It is melodramatic stuff, potentially. But Ken Loach and his
screenwriter Rona Munro offered up a bracing, unsentimental portrayal of a woman
on the edge: one that sees her side of the story, but doesn't always take it
unconditionally.
By her mid-thirties, Maggie has had four children by four different fathers,
a brood that she is patently ill-equipped to care for. Following an act of great
irresponsibility, she has them taken away from her. At this low point in her
life, she meets a man who seems different: Jorge, a gentle political refugee from
Paraguay who is drawn to her warmth and spirit. However,
breaking with her past, fending off the social services and above all breaking
her own ingrained patterns of aggressive and destructive behaviour prove far
more difficult than Maggie had bargained for.
The heart of Ladybird Ladybird is the blisteringly fierce and naked central
performance by Crissy Rock, a stand-up comic who had never acted before. Loach
has worked with male comedians with great success, notably in Riff-Raff
(1991) and The Navigators (2001). Ladybird Ladybird lacks those
two films' seams of mordant humour, and its unrelentingly black emotional pitch
makes for difficult viewing. But there's no denying Rock's powerful portrayal of
a woman whose defects are glaring, but also understandable, even forgivable. She
was named Best Actress at the 1994 Berlin Film Festival and went on to a career
in television, most recently in a regular role in the award-winning comedy
series Benidorm (ITV, 2007-11).
Munro's screenplay predates Loach's subsequent long collaboration with Paul
Laverty, but presages the strong Latin American flavour which that writer was to
bring to the director's work. It also harks back to 'Cathy Come Home' (BBC, tx.
16/11/1966), Loach's breakthrough film for The Wednesday Play anthology series (1964-70) about a
young woman threatened by homelessness and the constant intervention of social
workers.
There are affinities, too, with the work of Andrea Dunbar, whose raw, angry
plays set in Britain's underclass attracted acclaim throughout the 1980s: two of
them were conflated into Rita, Sue and Bob Too (d. Alan Clarke, 1986).
Sheila Johnston
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Production stills
