So Sherri Shepherd, Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz, And Mo’Nique All Walk Into A Sundance Movie…

What distinguishes Push: Based on a Novel By Sapphire from every other Sundance movie? Let’s start with Mariah Carey sporting the faintest hint of a moustache and go from there.

For a festival that too often programs films about young white boys sensitively coming of age or middle-class families dealing with grief, Push (not to be confused with the telekinetic Dakota Fanning movie) is almost bracingly exotic. It’s the story of an overweight black teenager in Harlem named Precious (newcomer Gabourey Sabide) who’s already pregnant with her second child as a result of her father’s sexual abuse, a predicament her vicious mother (Mo’Nique) has done nothing to put a stop to and may even be jealous of.

In short, Push has nothing in common with some of the twee indie films that often break out here—except that it has broken out, quickly becoming one of the festival’s most buzzed-about movies. It’s wild, comedic, and audacious, and it’s directed by Lee Daniels, whose previous film Shadowboxer featured a full-frontal Stephen Dorff (not to mention Cuba Gooding Jr. graphically screwing stepmom Helen Mirren). Daniels is clearly no shrinking violet and neither is his film, but Sapphire’s source novel provides a dramatic underpinning that keeps the camp from spinning out of control.

Need an example? The shadowy upper-lipped Carey gives one of the film’s least campy performances as a weary, makeup-free social worker. For someone who regularly bathes in Cristal, who even knew that Carey still had it in her to play a real person? Daniels delights in taking glammed-up stars and toning them way, way down—we may have recognised the near-unrecognisable Carey and Lenny Kravitz before the audience started whispering, “Is that them?” but we were stymied when Sherri Shepherd still hadn’t appeared by the end of the film. Then, with a shock, we realised that she’d been playing one of the small supporting characters the whole time and we hadn’t realised it—and we study her for a living!

We’ll see what the festival (and hopefully America) will make of Push soon—though we can’t wait for the sure-to-be-clueless reception it will get from the older, straight white men who make up the critical fleet here. “I don’t know whether anyone will say this out loud, but this is a very, very Black movie,” wrote a tentative David Poland. It doesn’t need to be said; the film sings like a Harlem gospel choir on LSD.