Marianne Jean-Baptiste gives one of the year’s best performances as a woman whose anger and depression alienate everyone around her in Mike Leigh’s family drama.
In his youth, BAFTA and Cannes-award-winning writer-director Mike Leigh favored kitchen sink dramas, working-class culture, the cutting, satirical arts of Ronald Searle, George Grosz, and William Hogarth, and the postwar emergence of Britain’s angry young men such as playwright John Osborne. All of these are reflected in Leigh’s warts-and-all depictions of Britain’s unhappy and angry toiling masses from his aptly-named debut film “Bleak Moments” (1971) to follow-ups such as “Meantime” (1983), “Life Is Sweet” (1990), “Naked” (1993) and “Secrets & Lies” (1996).
That last acclaimed film featured Marianne Jean-Baptiste as a Black British woman who seeks out her birth mother (Academy Award nominee Brenda Blethyn) after the death of her adoptive parents, leading to an unlikely relationship. National Society of Film Critics’ award winner Jean-Baptiste reunites with Leigh in “Hard Truths,” the story of a family that stays together, perhaps due to inertia, despite the divisiveness of one of its deeply troubled members. In this case, the culprit, if that is the right word, is the decidedly not flower-like wife and mother Pansy (Jean-Baptiste), a woman who finds herself constantly in angry, head-butting confrontations with others, both strangers and family members at gatherings. She is a disaster at such gatherings, where she can be set off like a nuclear detonation by any number of things. Her only defender is her steadfast and sympathetic younger sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin). After the death of their mother, Pansy had to raise Chantelle, even though she has been plagued by mental issues such as “bad dreams” all her life.
After his period efforts, “Mr. Turner” (2014), a biographical film about the English Romantic “painter of light” J.M.W. Turner (Leigh regular Timothy Spall), and “Peterloo” (2018), a depiction of the 1819 massacre of peaceful demonstrators by British soldiers in Manchester, England, Leigh returns to his roots with a downbeat contemporary family drama with occasional, lightning-like flashes of humor. Jean-Baptiste is masterful as a woman who seems like the unhappiest person in the world.
Pansy berates everyone she encounters: her long-suffering plumber husband Curtley (David Webber), their seemingly feckless son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), her dentist, a supermarket cashier, and a man in a parking lot. Her depression, which is her driving force, is fierce. She is distraught and inconsolable, states of mind we are all familiar with, therefore making us sympathize with Pansy even against our will. But she pushes everyone away, even (especially?) the audience. Her oversized son Moses suffers from a lack of motivation and ambition. He has no job and hangs around the house when he isn’t going out for lonely walks by himself. He is truly the son of Pansy.
Chantelle’s life is in stark contrast to her sister’s. Chantelle runs a thriving hair salon, has friends and is the loving, single mother of two grown daughters (Ani Nelson and Sophia Brown), with burgeoning careers. On Mother’s Day, Pansy and Chantelle’s families come together, and the sisters visit their mother’s grave. Will there be a teary reconciliation? The odds are bad to none. Leigh, 81, offers no easy answers. He makes the case that we cannot help but care for Pansy because we see ourselves in her (and because Jean-Baptiste plays her), and besides, misery loves company.
‘Hard Truths’
Rating: R for language.
Cast: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michelle Austin, David Webber
Director: Mike Leigh
Writer: Leigh
Running Time: 1 hour, 37 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common
Grade: A-
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