TIFF Review: ‘Hard Truths’ Reunites Mike Leigh with a Fantastically Prickly Marianne Jean-Baptiste

It’s not easy to get yelled at, especially when you didn’t do anything wrong. But it’s also not pleasant to be the one doing the yelling, unsatisfied with the behavior of others and desperate to indicate that feeling to someone who just isn’t listening. Hard Truths, the latest film from seven-time Oscar nominee Mike Leigh, selects as its protagonist a woman who has something nasty to say to everyone around her, not happy with anything and ready to lash out at a moment’s notice even when it doesn’t even seem as if she’s been provoked.

Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) comes on very strong, to put it mildly. She can’t stand that her twenty-two-year-old son, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett). doesn’t seem motivated to do anything with his life, barely communicates, and worst of all, leaves his trash for her to clean up. Her husband Curtley (David Webber) isn’t much better, exemplified by his unwise choice to ask what she’s making for dinner after she indicates that she’s exhausted and not feeling well and his even more lamentable follow-up act of getting takeout with picking anything up for her. Her sister Chantal (Michele Austin), who is far more capable of human interaction than she seems to be, wants a relationship with her, but she puts up about as many walls as she possibly can, especially as they prepare for Mother’s Day five years after their mother’s death.

From its first scene, this film is a laugh riot. Jean-Baptiste is firing on all cylinders, lobbing insult after insult at anyone who crosses her path. In most cases, she’s the instigator and the aggressor, and if not, it’s a small perceived offense that gets her going, like when two women behind her in line at the supermarket checkout counter dare to question her harsh treatment of the slow-moving employee scanning her groceries. Much of the film is just Pansy yelling at people, and though it can get vicious quite quickly, it never becomes a tired device since Pansy is so magnetically awful to everyone around her, whether they deserve it or not.

That Leigh’s films are historically based in improvisation makes this endeavor – and Jean-Baptiste’s hilarious performance – all the more impressive. It’s so frontloaded with humor that when it finally gets around to understanding the root of the problem and what’s caused Pansy to be so eternally on edge and at everyone’s throats, it’s almost disappointing to know that this isn’t the real Pansy but someone who has let herself get so angry about everything that she can no longer function. But fortunately, the dramatic additions are just as worthwhile and represent a positive tonal shift, leaving some more comedy for later on in the film so that audiences can still leave laughing.

Leigh, who turned eighty-one this year, continues to churn out remarkably creative cinema drawn from ordinary life. There is a small cast of core characters and a few minor roles, like a doctor and dentist who receive the brunt of Pansy’s wrath just daring to try to do their jobs. Probably most similar to Happy-Go-Lucky and Eddie Marsan’s miserable character, this film is truly enjoyable, putting a snarky twist on the sweet nature of past Leigh leads like Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky and Lesley Manville in Another Year. Jean-Baptiste, who last worked with Leigh nearly three decades ago on Secrets and Lies, delivers a star turn that makes the entire movie, which also includes great subplots involving Chantal and her two daughters, offering just a little slice of life for each of them to make them feel more real. Leigh rarely, if ever, disappoints, and his latest is a very sharp and funny treat.

Movie Rating: 8/10

Awards Buzz: Jean-Baptiste was Oscar-nominated back in 1996 for Secrets and Lies, which just happens to be Leigh’s only Best Picture nominee. Could this film put them both back in the Oscar conversation? A screenplay nod for Leigh is also possible.