Themes: Custody Battles, Fighting the System, Single Parents
Main Cast: Crissy Rock, Vladimir Vega, Ray Winstone, Sandie Lavelle, Mauricio Venegas
Release Year: 1994
Country: UK
Run Time: 102 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
A single mother struggles against the British social service system and her own troubled past in director Ken Loach's brutally realistic drama. Coming from a background of abuse and poverty, the hardened Maggie (Crissy Rock) has already suffered through a series of painful romances when she falls for the caring Jorge (Vladimir Vega), and they begin a loving but turbulent relationship. Their situation takes a turn for the worse when Maggie becomes pregnant, for her troubled past has left her branded an unfit mother by the government, with four previous children already in foster care. Determined to keep their child, Maggie and Jorge begin a difficult fight against the government bureaucracy, made all the more difficult by Maggie's volatile temperament. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
Review
British realist filmmaker Ken Loach takes a scalpel to the "based on a true story" school of filmmaking with this unrelenting tale of domestic strife and a government that unwittingly perpetrates it. Despite the casting of Crissy Rock, a former stand-up comic with no prior acting credits, Ladybird, Ladybird is almost devoid of the casual humor prominent in many of the director's other snapshots of British working-class life. Instead, Rock and Loach create a portrait of a warm but deeply flawed woman whose attempts at love and stability are undermined by a legacy of abuse. The punishments that Rock's Maggie suffers at the hands of Social Service agencies are heart-rending, but not altogether undeserved. The film's grim, grainy, unforced look is in keeping with Loach's content-over-form aesthetic. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Jason Stracey - Sean; Luke Brown - Mickey; Lily Farrell - Serena; Bruce Alexander - Lawyer; Linda Ross - Maggie's mother; Tom Keller - Social worker; Stephen Webber - Lawyer; Clare Pekins - Jill
Credit
Fergus Clegg - Art Director, Tommy Gormley - First Assistant Director, Ken Loach - Director, Jonathan Morris - Editor, George Fenton - Composer (Music Score), Mauricio Venegas - Composer (Music Score), Ray Beckett - Musical Direction/Supervision, Martin Johnson - Production Designer, Barry Ackroyd - Cinematographer, Sally Hibbin - Producer, Rona Monro - Screenwriter
It is a drama-documentary about a British woman's dispute with Social Services over the care and custody of her four children. The title comes from a traditional nursery verse. It won two awards at the Berlin International Film Festival
