The Help

Directed by Tate Taylor. Starring Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard, Cicely Tyson, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Sissy Spacek, Allison Janney PG cert, general release, 146 min

THE HELParrives as though the culture wars never happened. It an old-fashioned, fair-minded, race relations melodrama from a white director working from a novel by a white writer. In the early 1990s, such a picture might have expected a grilling from the representation police.

The black maid, the historical figure at the heart of the project, has long been a tricky subject for film-makers. Even before the era of political correctness, Chuck Jones began rotoscoping Mammy Two Shoes, Tom Jerry’s iconic domestic, into less offensive shapes. These days, the same character is Caucasion just to be on the safe side, while older episodes use African American WWE alpha girl Theo Vidale to overdub the original voicework.

How does one go about representing the black maid without causing grievous offence? Is it possible to depict such a downtrodden caste without retrospectively revising their lot and according them superpowers?

Kathryn Stockett, the author of The Help, has hit upon a neat solution. Her story incorporates the tricky business of storytelling itself in order to give a voice to those who, in the novel's historical setting (Mississippi during the early 1960s) had none.

At first glance, film’s heroine is Skeeter (Emma Stone), a Southern belle lately returned from college, who determines to write a book detailing the experiences of the black women who have tended her privileged class. But the book’s real heroine, it transpires, is Aibileen (Viola Davis), the black housekeeper who opens up and encourages others to do the same.

This entertaining film expands Stockett's duel protagonist model into a fully fledged classic Hollywood women's picture. The Help's warm, soapy rhythms beat out historic inequalities as a compelling catfight. Never mind Jim Crow – it's the playground rules you have to watch out for.

In a major subplot, Bryce Dallas Howard’s Hilly, a regular Hitler in a hoop skirt, is the driving force behind a local initiative demanding segregated lavatories for “sanitary” reasons. Her Queen Bee influence over bridge mornings ensures that other local women are soon demanding that the black women who raise their children go outside or not at all. Hilly’s malign influence extends well beyond her racist values, as ostracised local girl Celia (Jessica Chastain) can attest.

Elsewhere, scatological jokes and punchy plotlines enliven the movie’s weepie subtexts. But inevitably the most powerful moments derive from the relationships between black nannies and their white charges, children who often later inherit “the help” from their parents.

Viola Davis heads up a tremendous collective: there is no official collective noun to cover a cast that includes such formidable lady thespians as Chastain, Sissy Spacek and Allison Janney, but there ought to be. Put a gun to our head and we’ll still have difficulty choosing between Chastain, Howard and Octavia Spencer as The Help’s most accomplished scene stealer.