Hard Truths: Film Review
Now that I have seen Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, I am furious that Marianne Jean-Baptiste didn’t receive an Oscar nomination for her sensational performance.
The drama, set in London, tells the story of Pansy Deacon (Jean-Baptiste), a woman who is perpetually angry, paranoid and depressed. She takes these feelings out on others. Every encounter with her is stressful because nobody can do anything right, she turns everything into a confrontation (often for no reason) and feels like the world is out to get her. She sucks the joy out of every situation and can’t get through any interaction without getting pissed off.
The film doesn’t have a plot exactly; it’s mostly about Pansy and how her short temper and argumentative nature have affected her relationships with her husband Curtley (David Webber), son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) and nieces Kayla (Ani Nelson) and Aleisha (Sophia Brown). Chantelle is more tolerant and compassionate towards her sister while Curtley and Moses are basically checked out. Despite living together, they are isolated and barely speak to one another. It’s a lonely existence.
At first, Pansy’s rants are quite amusing because she makes some good points (why do baby clothes have pockets?!) and I found myself laughing out loud at her more outlandish tirades and brutally cutting remarks. But over time, it became quite sad and I felt sorry for her. The saying, “Hurt people hurt people” certainly applies here. Pansy is clearly not well and needs help. In addition to her mental health, she claims to be physically sick, but it’s hard to know if that’s genuine.
This is not a Hollywood film where everything is tied up neatly in a bow. There are no easy answers and Pansy and her family can’t be magically fixed. That being said, I wasn’t thrilled by where it finished and would have liked slightly more, even though you get a good sense of the situation with the final moments.
In less capable hands, Pansy could have been a stereotypical angry woman without much light and shade. But thanks to Jean-Baptiste’s compassionate and nuanced performance, we see under that hard exterior and understand that her rude personality is a product of her troubles. She feels unloved and hopeless. Elsewhere, Austin deserves praise for being sympathetic and the voice of reason, while the effervescent Brown and Nelson offer a shiny counterpoint to the unhappy and monosyllabic Moses.
Hard Truths is a well-observed character study of a complicated person with a tremendous performance from Jean-Baptiste.
In cinemas from Friday 31st January
Rating: 4 out of 5.
