Ladybird, Ladybird

Riff Raff told the story of a group of Scouse builders on a London building site being exploited by their employers; Raining Stones concerned a father on a low income trying to earn enough money for his daughter's communion dress. Ladybird, Ladybird completes the trilogy and is the most hard-hitting and harrowing of the three. Its central character is Maggie (Crissy Rock), a Liverpudlian single parent with four children. Her ex-boyfriend Simon was incredibly violent so she ran away; but the social services, anxious about her children, took them away from her and put them in care. She meets Jorge, a political exile from Paraguay, and has a child by him, but it is snatched instantly by the social workers.

Ladybird, Ladybird is not as cleady socialist as the trilogy's other films. Maggie's character seems at times to add fuel to some of the Tory propaganda about single mothers who breed. Certainly she is a difficult character to sympathise with. The Social Services make her life hell, true, but she isn't exactly reasonable with them. It is Maggie as well as the state who is Maggie's worst enemy.

More interesting however is Loach's use of Jorge, and his equation of Britain's (i.e. the Conservative party's) ideology with that of certain South American countries. That Jorge's skill at dealing with dictatorial authorities should have to be used with the British Social Services is the most sinister aspect of this film.

Review by Stephen Cox
Taken from EUFS Programme 1995-96