Actress ‘dazzles’ as woman who is always miserable in Mike Leigh film
Actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste and director Mike Leigh have reunited for a hard-hitting new film, nearly three decades after they first worked together.
Hard Truths, about an irritable woman whose constant misery puts severe strain on those around her, premiered at the London Film Festival on Monday evening.
Leigh and Jean-Baptiste previously collaborated on 1996’s Secrets & Lies – which scored Oscar nominations for best picture as well as best director and best supporting actress respectively.
Their critically acclaimed new film, which Leigh revealed was turned down by other film festivals, could see them both in the Academy Awards race once again.
Hard Truths centres on Pansy, a woman who seems constantly angry at the world, regularly getting into scrapes with everyone from shop assistants to her dentist.
Her attitude to life has a detrimental effect on her husband, son and sister in particular, characters who clearly love her, but can only take so much.
The film follows Pansy as she navigates various everyday situations with her bad-tempered approach. On Mother’s Day, things come to a head as their families gather together to mark the occasion.
Jean-Baptiste delivers a stunning central performance in the lead role – she is highly watchable despite playing such a grumpy character.
The actress joined Leigh and her co-stars at the film’s UK premiere at London’s Royal Festival Hall on Monday.
Puzzlingly, before receiving its world premiere in Toronto last month, Leigh confirmed the film was rejected by three major film festivals – Venice, Cannes and Telluride.
“It’s hard to know what to feel about Cannes,” Leigh told the Associated Press of the French festival where he had previously won the top prize. “If you look at the line-up, you think, maybe you can see that they wanted glitz and glamour.
“You think, whatever. I mean, if nobody wanted it at all… then I’d start to twitch.”
Reviews from the festivals where the film has played have been hugely positive, with Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson saying it’s “a pleasure seeing the pair reunited for another piercing character study” in a “dazzlingly complex, bracing work”.
“Leigh’s films can feel shaggy and unstructured on first viewing,” added Variety’s Peter Debruge. “Hard Truths is no different, but there’s profound poetry in every scene.”
Screen Rant’s Patrice Witherspoon noted: “Inherently, witnessing a woman propel insults at people is humorous, but sadness layers the script, making it deeply moving.”
While the film isn’t an easy watch, she added, “thanks to a stunning lead performance from Jean-Baptiste and an ending that doesn’t take the easy way out, it is a must-watch”.
“The beauty of Hard Truths,” reflected Next Best Picture’s Nadia Dalimonte, “is its incredible embrace of Pansy in all her complexities”.
Tonally, the film feels like vintage Mike Leigh – seemingly focused on the everyday and the mundane, yet packed with meaning.
All the classic Leigh traits are here, down to the gentle woodwind instruments which provide the score. But the film’s quiet, unflashy style allows the characters to breathe in a way that arguably leaves a much bigger impact on the viewer.
The dialogue spoken by the overwhelmingly black cast feels authentic, perhaps suspiciously so for a film which a 81-year-old white man is credited with writing.
But in fact, Leigh’s sole screenplay credit is deceptive. After writing the core plot and the basic dialogue, the director works with his cast via rehearsals and improvisation to shape the characters’ words in ways that feel authentic for them.
“No doubt there will be some debate over Leigh’s qualifications to portray this particular milieu, a middle-class and upper working-class sector of London’s Afro-Caribbean community,” noted Screen Daily’s Jonathan Romney in his review.
“But bearing in mind his famous collaborative working methods, it is clear just how much the cast have contributed to the film’s cultural detail.
“While the dramatic premise is hardly specific to a black environment, the references and linguistic patterns feel bang-on – notably Pansy’s shifting between Cockney and Caribbean inflections.”
Hard Truths will be released in the UK in January.
