CINEMA: Stanley Peskin
LADYBIRDS are conventionally associated with children, fire and loss and it is these associations which are brought to bear upon the female protagonist in Ken Loach’s Ladybird Ladybird. The rhyming title does not in any way soothe the audience’s feelings. Rather it is submitted to a harrowing account, based on a true story, of a woman who is allowed to keep only three of her nine children.
Loach relies on medium close-ups, long takes and repetitive patterns in the dialogue to ensure the gritty, realistic tone that dominates the movie. Although his sympathies are clearly with the mother who loses her children to social services, he also allows us to see the less sympathetic side of her character.
In a number of emotionally graphic sequences, Maggie (Crissy Rock in a compelling and uncompromising performance) loses self-control and is foul-mouthed. I am not sure the film claims that being the biological mother is always enough. Despite the ugliness of her own upbringing, her culpability cannot be ignored.
If Maggie’s history is one of abusive relationships, the history of the gentle and caring man (Vladimir Vega) with whom she eventually becomes involved marks him out as a refugee from a politically violent Paraguayan government. He, too, is a victim of a system he cannot change. His close relationship with Maggie, signified in the shot of their clasped hands that ends the film, is a symbiotic one, albeit unspoken by either
Maggie’s past is shown in a series of gruelling flashbacks which document the lack of stability and family support in her life. Loach’s technique may tend towards self-effacement, but it does not release the audience from an emotional grip that is almost