Pansy is angry and she doesn’t know why.
We all have days like that, when we snap at strangers for a minor infraction: The person who wants the spot in the parking lot that you’re not ready to leave, the couple behaving a little inappropriately in a public place, the chipper doctor making pleasantries when you’re in pain. It’s the stuff road rage is made of: Irrational, primal, real and inescapable. Sometimes it’s a loving family member that bears the brunt of the fury. For the most, part we all leave the vortex eventually and hopefully without too much damage in the wake.
But for Pansy, the unforgettable heroine of Mike Leigh’s film “Hard Truths” portrayed by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, that simmering discontent is her all day, every day. It’s life, and she can’t break the cycle. She’s a tornado of unhappiness, spiraling through the mundanities of everyday life with seething anger and a vicious tongue to back it up. No one is spared: Not the young doctor filling in for her normal one, not her 20-something son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) who lives at home, not her merry hairdresser sister Chantelle (Michelle Austin) or her plumber husband Curtley (David Webber), but especially and mostly not strangers who dare cross her path. Sins include being too happy, being too slow, being too stupid or contrite, filling the kettle up too much, or not enough.
It’s funny at times, heartbreaking at others and always fascinatingly watchable. What, you wonder, is she going to say this time? Often Pansy does have a bit of a point, saying all the things that we’ve been conditioned not to say out loud so that our social structure can go on functioning. She gave up caring about any of that long ago, you imagine.
Part of the brilliance of “Hard Truths” is that it drops the audience in the middle of it all, not explaining (but definitely complaining). It’s a mystery to everyone, but those closest to her mostly just accept it. What other choice do they have, really? And yet it’s a tragedy for all to see Moses and Curtley walk on eggshells through their own lives. Chantelle tries a little harder to get to the heart of it, a central relationship that provides a small but monumentally meaningful arc about visiting their mother’s grave and a Mother’s Day gathering. It crescendos into an emotional release and a bit of perspective about Pansy’s emotional and physical pain that has only intensified since her own mother’s passing. But “Hard Truths” isn’t there to wrap it all up in a bow and leave the audience feeling good and healed. I’ll leave the cliffhanger for you to discover and debate (Jean-Baptiste gave her own reading of it).
It is a truly blistering performance from Jean-Baptiste, reuniting with Leigh after many years, in a collaboration that was entirely worth the wait and speaks volumes for his brilliant, unconventional process. And it is deeply silly that she’s already been overlooked for it from a major awards body. Hopefully others can correct the wrong.
Pansy is, of course, the biggest tragedy of all, a human so lost in their own resentments, manifested or real, that she may never get out of it. Sure she makes everyone’s life a little miserable when she’s around, but she’s having the worst time of all and it never, ever ends. Chantelle tries to remind her that she has a choice in the matter. You wonder if she believes or even hears her, or if she’s just too far gone. “Hard Truths” runs just 97 minutes, but it’s the kind of film and character that will stay with you long after — especially and most importantly when you find yourself having a Pansy kind of day.
“Hard Truths,” a Bleecker Street release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language. Running time: 97 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
