Although the big family holiday celebrations are nearly a month in the past, there’s always a need for a new look at sibs, parents, and kids at the movies. This new release is set across the pond and concerns connected family units headed by two sisters who couldn’t be more different. It’s that whole “sweet and sour” dynamic at play here. It’s also funny, sad, and totally engaging thanks to the reunion of a celebration filmmaker and one of his greatest actresses/collaborators after nearly three decades. This time out they’re giving us an intimate look at a damaged soul who really needs to deal with some HARD TRUTHS.
The film’s story begins on a quiet street in a London neighborhood. It’s early on a sunny Spring-like day as a young man on a bicycle meets up with his boss as the enter their work van outside a modest home. Inside the ill-tempered matriarch of the family, Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is lecturing her 22-year-old son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) as he silently shuffles out the door, headphones always in place. Meanwhile, the patriarch and owner of that work van, Curtley (David Webber) toils away with that chatty cyclist, Virgil (Jonathan Livingstone) during a home renovation job. Across town, Pansy’s younger sister Chantelle (Michele Austin), happily chats with her clients as she styles their hair at a beauty salon. That night Pansy relates a list of aggevations during her dinnertime tirade as Curtley and Moses eat in near silence. Across town sister Chantelle enjoys a bottle of wine and some bubbly gossip at the walk-up apartment she shares with her two twenty-something working daughters, Aleisha (Sophia Brown) and Kayla (Ani Nelson). The next day, Pansy gets a free hair treatment from her sister, as Chantelle tries to invite her over for a family meal after they visit the grave of their late Mum (it is Mother’s Day). Pansy won’t commit as she squawks about her tangled follicles. After they’re finished Chantelle is back at the salon, as Pansy is “unleashed on the world” spewing venom and bile at salesclerks, doctors, motorists, and dental hygienists. Back at home, she sleeps during the day while cowering in fear of the wildlife (birds and a timid fox) invading the small backyard garden. So how long can she vent her anger at family and strangers before it takes its toll on them and on her health? And will she get together for the holiday with her concerned sister who loves her despite everything? Can the sibs get to the root of Pansy’s rage?
Much acclaim has already been directed at Ms. Jean-Baptiste along with several acting awards from film fests and critics groups. To put it mildly, these accolades are extremely well deserved. Pansy is perhaps a human-wrecking ball, destroying the tranquility of any setting she enters, much like the Tasmanian Devil of Looney Tunes fame, though her insults are sharper than his fangs. And in the hands of an actor with modest skills, Pansy could be a cartoonish character, a riff on the still popular “Karen” memes. But Jean-Baptiste dives much further, giving us a profile of “the walking wounded”. Her screeds release no tension from the body, instead refilling her inner pressure (and making us wonder if she’ll reach a detonation). Jean-Baptiste conveys that weariness through her downturned eyes and stiff, robotic body movements. Pansy is similar to a wounded animal in the wild, in agony but quick to strike back at anyone trying to offer aid. In this tale, it’s kid sister Chantelle, who is given a calm, nurturing disposition by the beaming Ms. Austin. She’s a ray of sunshine to all that she encounters, though we see her heartbreak when no amount of her kindness connects with her suffering sibling. Plus Austin as Chantelle is a great Mum (and a fun chum) to her daughters, played with great energy and humor by Brown and Nelson. As for Pansy’s household, Webber as the brow-beaten husband Curtley, stays stoic, but his withering glare hints at his own seeting disgust with his mate. Luckily he also has a fatherly concern for his only son Moses, playing an aimlessly lost soul, staring downward as he wanders the streets (he doesn’t stand up to a pair of bullies) and only waking up when he’s indulging his love of aviation via books and video games (perhaps to fly away from his misery). He may be the most tragic of the fractured family.
This exceptional ensemble is brilliantly guided by writer/director Mike Leigh, who gives us a look inside the lives of a family that could be from everyone, even down the street from you or me (kudos also for the quaint quiet locales that feel far from bustling London). Leigh lets us spend time with all the characters at work and at home. We get brief scenes of Aliesha and Kayla on the job during some fairly difficult exchanges (a skin care product pitch turns nasty unexpectantly), to show us that they can “leave it at the office” and be civil and sweet back home with Chantelle. But the real “meat” of the “movie meal” is Pansy “on the march” and Leigh shows us the stunned reactions of folks caught in the “line of fire”, flustered as they try to be professional and respectful (oh, the trials of the service and retail industry). This culminates in a quiet, almost hushed, healing of “old wounds” that should heal, though it seems a bit temporary. Happily, Leigh does deliver a bit of hope, a small shaft of light at the end of a dark tunnel, in the film’s final moments which (and this is rare) has us wondering about the characters and actually wishing to stay with them just a tad longer. The superb direction, engaging screenplay, and stellar performance by Jean-Baptiste make it hard not to be impressed and entertained by these HARD TRUTHS.
3.5 Out of 4
HARD TRUTHS is now playing in select theatres
