Marianne Jean-Baptiste Gives a Performance for the Ages in “Hard Truths”

The Current CinemaIn his excoriatingly funny new film, the British realist Mike Leigh reunites with a key actor from his 1996 triumph, “Secrets & Lies.”Michele Austin and Marianne Jean-Baptiste star in Mike Leigh’s film.Illustration by Zack RosebrughWe first met Hortense Cumberbatch, the soft-spoken optometrist at the heart of Mike Leigh’s wonderful 1996 film, “Secrets & Lies,” at a funeral. The camera paid her little mind. Dwarfed by a crowd of mourners in a cemetery, her head bowed as she murmured along to “How Great Thou Art,” Hortense, played with crystalline restraint by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, didn’t give much indication of being a main character. It’s possible that Jean-Baptiste, a Black British stage actor and musician with only a handful of small film roles to her name, didn’t know it yet herself. One of the curious effects of Leigh’s famously unorthodox working methods—in which the shape of a story and the nature of its characters are discovered, and perfected, through an often months-long process of acting workshops and rehearsals—is that the performers themselves seldom know beforehand whether they’re playing a lead or a supporting role.Leigh’s approach, dogged in its pursuit of emotional truth, is meant to frustrate such narrative hierarchies to begin with. His dramas, among them the TV movie “Meantime” (1983) and cinematic features such as “Naked” (1993), “Topsy-Turvy” (1999), and “Vera Drake” (2004), remind us that no one is a supporting player in their own life—a truth made especially plain in “Secrets & Lies,” which is predicated on shock revelations and hidden identities. Hortense, having lost both her adoptive parents, set out to track down her biological mother—only to learn that she had been born to a white woman, Cynthia Purley (Brenda Blethyn). As years’ worth of disclosures and recriminations erupted into the open, the serene Jean-Baptiste held us close and rapt. At the climax, amid a flood of family histrionics, our eyes sought out Hortense, sitting on the sidelines, stricken with remorseful silence.Hortense was the first major Black character in a Leigh film, and, as vivid and memorable as she was, you couldn’t help wanting more of her, and also more for her: perhaps a scene with other members of her adoptive family, or just one moment in which she was permitted, like Cynthia and her emotionally unfettered kin, to fly into some histrionics of her own. I thought of Hortense often while watching “Hard Truths,” Leigh’s blisteringly funny and crushingly sad new movie, in which Jean-Baptiste fumes, rages, and, to my mind, gives the performance of the year and likely of her career. Arriving nearly three decades after “Secrets & Lies,” “Hard Truths” has the feel of a genuine companion work. Intentionally or not, it expands on, completes, and at times challenges its predecessor. (Even its title feels like a blunt rejoinder.)Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy Deacon, a middle-aged woman of Caribbean descent who lives in North London with her husband, Curtley (David Webber), and their twenty-two-year-old son, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett). Here and there are warm, persistent echoes of “Secrets & Lies”: the wonderful Michele Austin, who played Hortense’s friend Dionne, returns here as Pansy’s younger sister, Chantelle. Another cemetery scene looms at the midpoint, when Chantelle drags a scowlingly reluctant Pansy to honor their mother, five years after her sudden passing. (It should be noted that both movies were shot by Leigh’s longtime cinematographer, Dick Pope, who died in October; “Hard Truths” was his final film.)The similarities largely end there. Where Hortense projected a luminous inner calm, Pansy is profoundly unhappy. From the moment we meet her—she jerks upright in bed, emitting a loud, agonized cry—it’s clear that her life has become a chain of rude awakenings and unmitigated miseries. Jean-Baptiste, her mouth set in a tight-lipped frown, her eyes ablaze with fear and loathing, soft-pedals nothing. At home, Pansy spends much of her time trying to sleep, complaining of pain and exhaustion. In her waking moments, she scrubs down every surface with, presumably, a pandemic-bred obsessiveness, giving us ample time to notice her house’s blank walls and spartan chill. She is wary of open windows, which could let in a stray animal from the back yard or even a gulp of fresh air. The very name Pansy feels like a cruel joke; when Moses musters the courage to buy her flowers for Mother’s Day, she can’t bring herself to touch them. For their part, Moses and Curtley keep their heads down, lest they find themselves on the receiving end of Pansy’s fury. (Curtley, a plumber, loses himself in his work; Moses, who’s unemployed, plays video games in his room and goes on long walks.)When Pansy does venture outdoors, to see a doctor or do some shopping, she invariably picks fights with strangers, which can rise to impressive peaks of insult-comedy flair. “Your balls are so backed up you’ve got sperm in your brain!”

Jan 3, 2025 - 09:53
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Marianne Jean-Baptiste Gives a Performance for the Ages in “Hard Truths”
In his excoriatingly funny new film, the British realist Mike Leigh reunites with a key actor from his 1996 triumph, “Secrets & Lies.”
Image may contain Kid Gaviln Art Painting Adult Person Fashion Face and Head
Michele Austin and Marianne Jean-Baptiste star in Mike Leigh’s film.Illustration by Zack Rosebrugh

We first met Hortense Cumberbatch, the soft-spoken optometrist at the heart of Mike Leigh’s wonderful 1996 film, “Secrets & Lies,” at a funeral. The camera paid her little mind. Dwarfed by a crowd of mourners in a cemetery, her head bowed as she murmured along to “How Great Thou Art,” Hortense, played with crystalline restraint by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, didn’t give much indication of being a main character. It’s possible that Jean-Baptiste, a Black British stage actor and musician with only a handful of small film roles to her name, didn’t know it yet herself. One of the curious effects of Leigh’s famously unorthodox working methods—in which the shape of a story and the nature of its characters are discovered, and perfected, through an often months-long process of acting workshops and rehearsals—is that the performers themselves seldom know beforehand whether they’re playing a lead or a supporting role.

Leigh’s approach, dogged in its pursuit of emotional truth, is meant to frustrate such narrative hierarchies to begin with. His dramas, among them the TV movie “Meantime” (1983) and cinematic features such as “Naked” (1993), “Topsy-Turvy” (1999), and “Vera Drake” (2004), remind us that no one is a supporting player in their own life—a truth made especially plain in “Secrets & Lies,” which is predicated on shock revelations and hidden identities. Hortense, having lost both her adoptive parents, set out to track down her biological mother—only to learn that she had been born to a white woman, Cynthia Purley (Brenda Blethyn). As years’ worth of disclosures and recriminations erupted into the open, the serene Jean-Baptiste held us close and rapt. At the climax, amid a flood of family histrionics, our eyes sought out Hortense, sitting on the sidelines, stricken with remorseful silence.

Hortense was the first major Black character in a Leigh film, and, as vivid and memorable as she was, you couldn’t help wanting more of her, and also more for her: perhaps a scene with other members of her adoptive family, or just one moment in which she was permitted, like Cynthia and her emotionally unfettered kin, to fly into some histrionics of her own. I thought of Hortense often while watching “Hard Truths,” Leigh’s blisteringly funny and crushingly sad new movie, in which Jean-Baptiste fumes, rages, and, to my mind, gives the performance of the year and likely of her career. Arriving nearly three decades after “Secrets & Lies,” “Hard Truths” has the feel of a genuine companion work. Intentionally or not, it expands on, completes, and at times challenges its predecessor. (Even its title feels like a blunt rejoinder.)

Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy Deacon, a middle-aged woman of Caribbean descent who lives in North London with her husband, Curtley (David Webber), and their twenty-two-year-old son, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett). Here and there are warm, persistent echoes of “Secrets & Lies”: the wonderful Michele Austin, who played Hortense’s friend Dionne, returns here as Pansy’s younger sister, Chantelle. Another cemetery scene looms at the midpoint, when Chantelle drags a scowlingly reluctant Pansy to honor their mother, five years after her sudden passing. (It should be noted that both movies were shot by Leigh’s longtime cinematographer, Dick Pope, who died in October; “Hard Truths” was his final film.)

The similarities largely end there. Where Hortense projected a luminous inner calm, Pansy is profoundly unhappy. From the moment we meet her—she jerks upright in bed, emitting a loud, agonized cry—it’s clear that her life has become a chain of rude awakenings and unmitigated miseries. Jean-Baptiste, her mouth set in a tight-lipped frown, her eyes ablaze with fear and loathing, soft-pedals nothing. At home, Pansy spends much of her time trying to sleep, complaining of pain and exhaustion. In her waking moments, she scrubs down every surface with, presumably, a pandemic-bred obsessiveness, giving us ample time to notice her house’s blank walls and spartan chill. She is wary of open windows, which could let in a stray animal from the back yard or even a gulp of fresh air. The very name Pansy feels like a cruel joke; when Moses musters the courage to buy her flowers for Mother’s Day, she can’t bring herself to touch them. For their part, Moses and Curtley keep their heads down, lest they find themselves on the receiving end of Pansy’s fury. (Curtley, a plumber, loses himself in his work; Moses, who’s unemployed, plays video games in his room and goes on long walks.)

When Pansy does venture outdoors, to see a doctor or do some shopping, she invariably picks fights with strangers, which can rise to impressive peaks of insult-comedy flair. “Your balls are so backed up you’ve got sperm in your brain!” she yells at a driver in a parking lot. Back home at the dinner table, Pansy extemporizes ferociously on the micro-absurdities of modern life: the clothing of pets, the nosiness of charity workers, the superfluities of infant apparel (“What’s a baby got pockets for? What’s it gonna keep in its pocket, a knife?”). Let no one, in their understandable eagerness to praise Leigh as an anatomist of the human condition, downplay just how entertaining “Hard Truths” is. Woe betide anyone who bumps into Pansy on the street, but to watch her onscreen produces a kind of bruised exhilaration; her viciousness has an awesome life force. At a certain point, I began wondering whether Pansy would be best served not by counselling or antidepressants but by a few pints and an open mike.

For some time now, Leigh’s great subject has been the elusive nature and uneven allocation of happiness—an inequity at the heart of his contemporary working-class dramas, such as “Life Is Sweet” (1991), “Another Year” (2010), and, perhaps most of all, his delightful 2008 comedy, “Happy-Go-Lucky.” In that movie, Sally Hawkins played the sweet-souled Poppy, who greeted every misfortune with a giggle of unvexed good will, and who remains one of the most polarizing protagonists in the Leigh canon. Pansy, as clenched and misanthropic an antithesis to Poppy as anyone could imagine, may well join her in that company. (In a better world, they’d headline their own buddy comedy.) But the brilliance of both characters—and of Hawkins’s and Jean-Baptiste’s richly inventive performances—is the way they hint at gray zones within their respective emotional extremes. Is a woman’s defiant happiness or unhappiness a basic reflex, a learned habit, or a meticulously considered response to the world and its horrors?

With Pansy, no answers are forthcoming. “Why can’t you enjoy life?” Chantelle demands, love and exasperation in her voice. “I don’t know” is Pansy’s immovable reply. The integrity of Leigh and Jean-Baptiste’s approach is that they believe, and respect, the character’s dearth of self-knowledge. Pansy and Chantelle talk of shared childhood woes—an absent father, an overly critical mother—that placed a far heavier burden of responsibility on Pansy, the firstborn. But the movie knows that psychology and exposition have their dramatic limits, and Pansy’s feelings of isolation—“I’m so lonely,” she says, in a break from her usual refrain of “I’m so tired”—are wisely framed as a mystery with no solution.

If Leigh has little use for explanations, he is nonetheless fascinated by counterexamples, and he frequently takes us beyond Pansy’s purview, to show us how others make sense of the world. Chantelle is a hair stylist, and the salon where she works appears to be an inviting fixture in the city’s West Indian community, overflowing with gossip and good-natured wisdom. High spirits also prevail in the apartment that Chantelle shares with her two grown daughters, Kayla (Ani Nelson) and Aleisha (Sophia Brown); in one playful sequence, the three of them all but fall over one another laughing, their mood as bright as their pajamas. Two scenes that are wholly untethered to the main plot, and no less incisively observed for that, take place at Kayla’s and Aleisha’s respective workplaces. Each is a modest tour de force of in-office confrontation—a reminder that happiness seldom means, or requires, the absence of conflict or disappointment.

As so often, Leigh’s emotional egalitarianism feels like the product of a sensibility both mathematical and philosophical—as if, by juggling enough individual perspectives, experiences, and world views, he could advance a persuasive theory, if not a definitive proof, of human behavior. The effect is not without its schematic aspects; the contrast between Pansy’s spotless, Airbnb-ready home and Chantelle’s leafier, more lived-in one—or between the closed-off Moses and his perpetually upbeat cousins—could hardly be more severe. The toughest figure to nail down is Curtley, whose lumpen stoicism both elicits and dodges our sympathies. Did years of enduring Pansy’s hectoring break him, or did his own emotional remove push her away and over the edge? His solemnity and her contempt converge, with startling force, in the movie’s final moment. As vaguely as we understand what brought them here, we’re even less certain where they’re headed. Not for the first time in Mike Leigh’s work, the absence of a clear truth may be the hardest one to bear. ♦

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