Some people bring happiness and positivity to the world, uplifting the lives of those around them, and others make flowers wilt and milk curdle wherever they go. As Pansy, Marianne Jean-Baptiste embodies the latter class in “Hard Truths,” following her reunion with “Secrets & Lies” director Mike Leigh, with her richest character yet (not financially speaking, of course, although we’d all be millionaires if we had a penny for every biting complaint that falls from Pansy’s lips).
“Hard Truths” arrives more than 50 years after Leigh’s first film, “Bleak Moments,” which marks the end of a career of harsh looks at British working-class life. Frankly, that vague-sounding title seems more suited to a Criterion Collection boxed set of her work than to her latest (but not last, we hope) film. A return to intimate kitchen realism after the grand-scale ambition of several relatively expansive period films — Topsy-Turvy, Vera Drake, Mr. Turner and Peterloo — the film offers just a glimmer of plot to accompany its thorny but fair microportrait of an epically unpleasant wife and mother.
Director: Mike Leigh
Writer: Mike Leigh
Stars: Samantha Spiro, Jo Martin, Marianne Jean-Baptiste
From the moment Pansy wakes up (with a gasp of sheer panic, more often than not), the world seems to irritate her. Watch out, everyone who crosses her path, as Pansy picks fights with virtually everyone she encounters, whether it’s a well-meaning supermarket cashier or the wary dental hygienist. She hurls insults at complete strangers, sizing them up in an instant before unleashing her put-downs (most of them hilariously on point, as if she should be writing for “Veep” or another of Armando Iannucci’s shows). Pansy’s misanthropy can be disarmingly funny, though it’s obviously much easier to laugh at such a person on screen than in her presence.
“You don’t know my suffering,” she screams. “You don’t know my pain!” When that would be enough to get most people to mind their own business, Leigh digs deep. Driven by a sincere, unprejudiced interest in what motivates people, the director seeks to understand that person, entrusting Jean-Baptiste with the task of revealing the character in the same way he tasked Sally Hawkins with revealing Poppy in “Happy-Go-Lucky.” Pansy and Poppy might be two sides of the same coin—one seems doomed to be miserable all her life, while the other is incorrigibly optimistic—but both are contagious dispositions best experienced in moderation.
In any case, Leigh asks the audience to spend an uncomfortable amount of time in the skin of his characters, counting on empathy to illuminate such extreme personalities. What must it be like to live with such people, as their families do? It’s a miracle that Pansy’s henpecked partner, Curtley (David Webber), can withstand the near-constant criticism. Her son, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), has it even worse. Overweight and unmotivated, he spends his days playing video games, cowering in the face of her vocal disapproval.
In another kind of movie, Moses might go shooting up a schoolyard and the audience would know where that impulse comes from. But Leigh has a much less basic sense of cause and effect. His films don’t boil down to neat little synopses. They originate with the actors, who describe for Leigh one or more people they know in the real world. From this, Leigh identifies the characters and then instructs his crew to interact with each other, using those improvisations to shape the script.
In “Hard Truths,” Leigh was eager to work with Jean-Baptiste again, developing a series of combative encounters over several days, rather than a traditional plot. She’s always irritable, though her reasons remain a mystery. It can’t just be upbringing, as her affable sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) radiates a very different energy. She sings and smiles, dancing along with her two adult daughters (Ani Nelson and Sophia Brown) in the privacy of their living room — the polar opposite of Pansy, whose negativity is a form of narcissism. While Pansy makes everything revolve around her, Leigh takes a slightly different approach, checking in with other characters, just to contrast how they behave in her absence.
Pansy may be a party pooper, but she’s loved all the same, as only family can. She’s been conditioned to expect the worst. For some, that might be a way of protecting themselves from disappointment, and yet Pansy always manages to feel disappointed or offended by existence. In some cases, she's right (the police have a history of harassing black citizens, and someone so skeptical of others is much less likely to be scammed).
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