Almost There: Marianne Jean-Baptiste in "Hard Truths"
Wednesday, March 5, 2025 at 5:00PM 
This year's Academy Awards saw Mikey Madison's work in Anora become the 100th performance to take the Best Actress Oscar. There's much to say about this race, good and bad, and I'm currently preparing some stuff on Demi Moore and Fernanda Torres. But today, I would like to reflect on the category beyond the five women AMPAS chose to recognize. Because, in my opinion, the year's best performance bar none, as well as the film which contains it, was absent from the Oscars altogether. For the season's last Almost There, I invite you to take a trip into Mike Leigh's cinema, a world of deep character work and improvisation, collaborative writing and ensemble dynamics, tonal whiplash and social observation. Let's talk Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths…
To the sound of Gary Yershon's pleasant tunes, Hard Truths starts with a tenor of tentative peace. We observe a father and son go about their business on the outside of their abode, all crisp through Dick Pope's digital photography. But while the actions depicted are perfectly quotidian, there's some tension about them. Especially on re-watch, these men seem to be walking on tenterhooks. Cut to inside the house, where the matriarch, Pansy, is just waking up for the day. Well, she doesn't so much come awake as she sits upright with a startling shout. Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays the moment with a degree of vulnerability that will be hard to come by during the next hour of Hard Truths, portraying a woman rattled by the pains of her own mind.
She looks frightened, shaken, but also resigned to a reality that's been her usual for eons. Alone in that spotless abode, somewhat paralyzed by neurosis, these behavioral cues continue, with the birds outside beckoning an inchoate fear that's slowly curdling into a rage. By the time she's seen obsessively cleaning the already clean living room, Pansy's in a fury – her natural state of being. In terms of structure and character, this morning passage is an essential tidbit for it positions the leading lady's aggressive demeanor as something that builds up on some interior unrest, as ineffable as that might seem on a first impression.
Anger is not gratifying for Pansy, no matter how much the audience might be compelled to laugh at her or her victims' stupefied faces. Well, some of the people who suffer her abuse aren't exactly surprised. Her family has grown used to it, as one can attest by her son's reaction. As played by Tuwaine Barrett, Moses is a sad sack of a young man, cowered into self-effacement in regards to a mother who can't seem to express herself through anything less censorious than a good reprimand. Both actors play their scenes insularly, conversations between people who aren't so much communicating as talking in the same space, utterly and paradoxically alone.
And yet, Jean-Baptiste adds layers to her outrage. For every one of her irrational tirades, there's a seed of hurt from which all that fire and brimstone, piss and vinegar, grows. This is especially true in those scenes with Moses and similar moments with her husband, David Webber's Curtley. A lesser actress would surrender to the potential one-dimensionality of Pansy's anger, but not Jean-Baptiste. Another interesting tidbit is how exhausting it all seems, both to the woman's family and herself. You could be forgiven for assuming fury would act as fuel, but not so. Every one of her outbursts seems to deplete Pansy further.
Sure, there's the illusion of a power surge when she's in the middle of a rant, but you can see her come down whenever there's a pause in that vicious speechifying of hers. Pansy's running on fumes and desperate, often looking as if she's trying to reach out and be heard but can't stop herself from sabotaging that attempt with more vituperous bombast. An early dinner scene exemplifies this dynamic to a T while working within the sort of Mike Leigh realist approach that eschews naturalism for something more heightened. Pansy is awfully articulate, her lines spewing out like well-rehearsed monologues, manicured with a writerly touch.
It's the same trick of many of the auteur's most beloved past works, from the working-class soap of Life is Sweet to the driving lesson verbal matches of Happy-Go-Lucky. It's also a tonal twister mechanism that plays into the contrasts and contractions of mood Leigh is exploring with Hard Truths, specifically. For the film's first act, Pansy's rants are hilarious, an insult comic's routine couched within a fine-tuned characterization. Nevertheless, they twist every scene of hers into a state of permanent tension, an uncomfortable status quo in need of release. That needed reprieve comes in the form of Michele Austin's Chantelle, the lead's sister, and her daughters.
Even the way those women negotiate their delivery speaks of a more relaxed realism than the one Jean-Baptiste embodies, closer to the ease of everyday life than Pansy's constant struggle. Living with or as this woman is uncomfortable. Watching her isn't too different, always oscillating between laugh-out-loud cringe and terrified awe at the misery she exudes. When the polar opposites, of tone and acting register, come together in scenes shared between Jean-Baptiste and Austin, you get these glimpses into a past to which we're never given complete access. Hard Truths will make it clearer down the line, but there's a lot of deliberate repetition before we get there.
Not that Jean-Baptiste is one-note or that she handles every scene with the same strategy. A clash with a furniture store's employee sparks a note of insecurity and fear in Pansy, which we only ever see again when she's home alone. The ensuing parking lot argument starts at a place of evident frustration, not at the strangers she berates but at her inability to talk to anyone without starting an argument. As much as Pansy hates everyone else, she appears to have a good share of self-loathing to cope with, too. Perhaps she's angriest at herself. It's a miracle that you can laugh at this, a testament to the tonal prowess of director and star.
"You don't know my suffering. You don't know my pain… I'm a sick woman." So says Pansy, woken from a restless nap after a sleepless night, when her husband asks her to clean the kitchen and cook dinner. It's a first straightforward show of self-awareness that starts to unravel and reveal heaps of resentment toward her dead mother, resentment toward the men in her life that pay no mind to her anxieties. It's easy to see why they'd do so, dismissing her chronic pain because her reactions to it are so outwardly hostile. It's hard to look down on these individuals, and Jean-Baptiste certainly avoids playing the role for pity. She comes close to outright repudiating it, in fact.
Still, the filmmakers are demanding empathy for Pansy. You don't need to like her, but you should try to understand her. This comes to a head 50 minutes into the 97-minute film, when Chantelle cajoles her sister into paying respects to their mother's grave. It's Mother's Day, after all, but Pansy's not about to soften her memory of the dead woman just because it's the right thing to do. However, for the first time, the characters articulate Pansy's pained relationship to her own behavior. She can't enjoy life, and she doesn't know why. She's haunted and sees the unfairness of it, yet can't claw her way out of the madness that consumes her body and soul, from aching jaw to broken heart. She knows she's hated and doesn't believe she's loved.
Hearing Chantelle talking about how their mother died alone, something seems to crack within Pansy and, from then on, Jean-Baptiste's performance stops being about erecting barriers between herself and her scene partners, the camera, the audience. Instead, it's about a crumbling personhood, out of control and atonal to the core. This is best exemplified by the Mother's Day lunch when Pansy breaks down, a compulsive laugh gradually becoming a convulsive cry. All of a sudden, the actress crystalizes the essence of her director's many tragicomedies, bleeding mirth into misery in a way that subverts entertaining melodrama into something raw and altogether uncomfortable.
I'm even more impressed by what Jean-Baptiste accomplishes with her body, seeming to shrink into herself as if eaten up by a black hole trapped in her core. Pansy's tiredness is winning out, and so is her loneliness, a steely quiet that's so forceful because it's preventing us from seeing the woman collapse. She's her own straight-jacket. But, in this case, the confinement isn't just keeping her in. It's also keeping her together. If she stopped containing it all, pressure cooker-like, there'd be no stopping her cracked bits from falling to the ground, dispersing pieces of someone who is no more, someone who's turned into nothing.
The last half hour of Hard Truths is some of the most despondent cinema Mike Leigh ever created, anchored and sustained by Marianne Jean-Baptiste's tour de force every step of the way. Pansy's relationship with a son and husband she doesn't even like – which makes her hate herself even more – takes center stage, and it's impossible to ignore the horrifying reality underpinning all the rancor on display. Scenes like that of Pansy finding herself unable to thank Moses for a Mother’s Day bouquet and her handling of those flowers are heartbreaking. It's not funny anymore. If anything, you start to feel ashamed for having laughed.
Even within the parameters of heightened realism that Leigh workshops with his actors, this is all too real to be tolerable. It hurts, it makes you sick, it makes you want to throw up. At least, that's what I've felt both times I watched Hard Truths. Many have written about the cultural specifies evident in the picture's text and characters, all the ways in which Leigh and his cast have honed on particular aspects of the UK's Caribbean diaspora. I can't speak on that, but I can say that I've known Pansys in my life. Moreover, I've known them in my family. For some, Hard Truths may seem to be a caricature, but I wouldn't classify it as such.
The recognition is intense and lacerating, as is the familiar struggle to see past the abrasive exterior and touch the humanity hiding within. Dramatizations of mental illness often take the easy way out, forging pathways by which the audience may reach a secret interior world without needing to confront their instinctual revulsion, the need to protect oneself from the ire. They soften and they compromise, pulling for a smooth engagement that’s oh-so-different from the lived reality of those in such situations. Hard Truths doesn't do this, and neither does Marianne Jean-Baptiste. For that, they earn my respect, my tears, my admiration.
After being rejected by Cannes, Telluride, and Venice, Hard Truths had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The immediate reactions, including mine, were overwhelmingly positive, even rapturous, especially in regards to the picture's excellent cast. Expectations were high, yet Mike Leigh and company seemed to have met them. Logically, both the director and his leading lady came crashing into the awards conversation. Jean-Baptiste would go on to become a critics darling, earning countless nominations from regional groups and even some victories. On the season's final tally, she was close to the top, alongside eventual Oscar nominees Demi Moore and Mikey Madison.
So much so that she received a rare honor that, to some, might be even more prestigious than the Oscar. Jean-Baptiste won the critics trifecta – NYFCC, LAFCA, NSFC. She's only the tenth person to achieve this, and the first woman of color. Indeed, the Hard Truths star was the first Black actress to take the LAFCA prize. Until this season, only one person had earned the same three prizes without a corresponding Oscar nomination. It was Sally Hawkins in Mike Leigh's aforementioned Happy-Go-Lucky. History repeated itself, and another of the director's muses ended the season with an AMPAS snub to call their own. For what it's worth, Jean-Baptiste won the Team Experience Best Actress category.
Instead, the Academy chose Cynthia Erivo in Wicked, Karla Sofia Gascón in Emilia Pérez, Mikey Madison in Anora, Demi Moore in The Substance, and Fernanda Torres in I'm Still Here. In the end, though Demi Moore was the frontrunner after taking the Globe, the Critics Choice award, and the SAG, Mikey Madison, who had only previously won BAFTA, was crowned our newest Best Actress Oscar champion. Had she been nominated, Jean-Baptiste would join Erivo as one of the few Black actresses to receive more than one Oscar nomination throughout their career. Right now, that club only includes the Wicked star, Angela Bassett, Viola Davis, Whoopi Goldberg, and Octavia Spencer. And, of course, to this day, Halle Berry is the only Black woman to win the Best Actress Oscar. It's been 23 years.
You can rent Hard Truths from Amazon Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, and Spectrum On Demand. The film might also still be in theaters, depending on your location.
Reader Comments (18)
I'm sure what killed this movie's chances was being picked up by Bleecker street, they simply can't play the Oscar game in the same way other distributors can. Just for reference, only in the 2020s they've managed to get ONE Oscar nomination (for the makeup work in Golda), and their last nod in a major category was for Captain Fantastic in 2016
And not to mention the other times they screwed up a movie's awards potential, Mass and Leave no trace as the clearest examples. In the hands of a more capable distriibutor, probably Baptiste could have gotten better luck.
Just a correction Mikey won Bafta not SAG.
I am sorry Claudio but I wholeheartedly disagree with your assessment of Marianne which i think you knew I would.
It really saddens me to say it but I fully expected her to be my winner and the film and her left me with a big shrug,it was Leigh's weakest since Career Girls and i'm a big fan of his but with this and Peterloo he's lost me.
What once seemed natural now seems contrived and forced to make apoint.
I can;t praise the supporting actors enough though,real and raw,acting like humans act.
Marianne pushed too hard for effect,it felt unrehearsed and quite frankly unreal like Leigh forgot to tell her to reign it in a bit.
Having suffered with depression since my teens and known plenty of people with this afflicton not one ever acted they way Patsy does and me neither,angry sometimes frustrated yes but not constantly that way,depressives do laugh,they don't find the world a bad place all the time,there's some calibration in our behaviour,good and bad days.
You said she wasn't one note but she certainly was,that dinner scene was rescued by the others but by them underplaying and being natural it made her seem so much more OTT and unreal.
The dentist chair scene was terribly overplayed,screaming everytime she woke up,no reason given,the grave side attack about her Mum,the people in the furniture shop and market all felt very unnataural,,the scenes with her sister Austin who gave this film it's heart.
I'm not sure if it was the stilted dialogue or her acting,i'm still unsure.
The bit in the car park was badly written,people just don't shout at each other this way,they may argue but not in this contrived fashion with this type of dialogue,sometimes poor acting or not getting a handle on a character is just that
I wanted to be wrong so I watched it again with the b/f and he felt the same,he said no-ones constantly like that and had no idea what her problem was.
The end left me wondering why i'd bothered spending anytime in this woman's company.
The laughter scenes and party sequence is quite effective mostly due to those acting around Patsy then we were back to the acting of Marianne.
I fully expect people to tell me i'm wrong and this is one of the performances of last year but i just didn't see it and i'd like to read some other views to see what I missed or didn't get
Mr Ripley79 -- Thank you for the correction and for reading despite knowing you'd disagree.
I would like to say that everyone's different and you can't judge your experience with depression to everyone else's. I come from a family with various people who struggle with chronic depression, sometimes under medication. I include myself in that group and, while my impulse is more toward numbness than anger, I do know people who act like Pansy. I'm glad you've never experienced it, but I don't think HARD TRUTHS is being false for depicting these days in the character's life as it does. Indeed, many people seem to recognize themselves or their family in it. I've had conversations about that very recognition shared by others.
But I would also say that Leigh, for as realist as he is, never shies away from writerly affectation and over-articulated characters. I think you're misremembering his filmography if you believe HARD TRUTHS is especially unique - in a bad way, in your reading. I mention LIFE IS SWEET as an example, and HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, too. There's ANOTHER YEAR and the beautiful self-theatricality of the TOPSY-TURVY characters beyond the stage. Hell, NAKED and HIGH HOPES have these amazing monologues, almost novelistic, utterly detached from how people speak but no less truthful or incoherent within Leigh's cinematic landscape. I guess one can look at his pre-HIGH HOPES 1980s work and say he was striving for unvarnished naturalism, but even then, I'd disagree.
And I should clarify, I don't think escaping from perfect mimesis, exaggeration, or other heightened bits that make a film more artificial than not are necessarily bad. I think these choices help make Mike Leigh's cinema so special, even within a tradition of British cinema that exists in continuity with the kitchen sink drama. i'm a big proponent of perceived falsities as a way to capture cinematic truth. Indeed, I think every time I write about Leigh's actors, whether here or on my Lesley Manville Almost There, I touch on these questions.
But again, thanks for sharing your perspective, even if we disagree at every point.
Any ideas for future Almost Theres now that we're moving away from this awards season?
Claudio - Since I'm still hurting from Demi's loss, it would be fun to do an Almost There combo for Mila Kunis and Barbara Hershey...? :) Unless they've been done before.
I always read the Almost there series sometimes I agree and sometimes disagree and it's a great idea for a series
Also Claudio I see exactly what you mean about Leigh's artifice in his films dialogue,I remember it as less theatrical than in this film,it was so rooted in reality that sometimes I felt I was seeing the first trial run of a play.
I rewatched Happy Go Lucky recently and see how false the Poppy character can be but despite that I did believe in her and like her,she's also modulated by Hawkins well,Manville in Another Year sometimes over plays her hand but remains truthful but I didn't see this in Marianne,I just saw one note anger.
I didn't mean to belittle anyone elses experiences of depression at all esp fellow readers,I was just saying the anger seemed too forced as to be believable.
Maybe thsoe types do exist,I can be angry when in a dark mood,lashing out for the tiniest thing and then be kind and warm then back to curt and dismissive if feeling frustrated or slighted,it's complex and each has a different experience so apologies for being judgemental.
Maybe having a passion for a certain director and loving previous works can make me judge them more harshly than I might others.
If I could pick an Almost There from this year i'd ask for Kate Winslet in Lee,Harris Dickinson in Babygirl or Clarence Maclin in Sing Sing.
From the past i'd ask for some of my favourite non nominated roles Catherine Zeta Jones in Traffic,Michael Douglas Wonder Boys,John Goodman for Barton Fink,Debra Winger in Rachel Getting Married/Urban Cowboy or Hilary Swank for The Homesman.
Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina
Diane Keaton in Looking for Mr Goodbar
John Gielgud in Providence
Penélope Cruz in Volver
I'm a huge fan of Mike Leigh, but this was his worst film - much too short to let the characters breathe, and there was dialogue and scenes that were bordering on the parodic, in a bad way. .
I agree with others that MJB wasn't at her best here, in an often exaggerated performance that rarely rings true. She campaigned as much as she could, but I never predicted her to get in the AMPAS line-up - poor studio and the likelihood of the film not being embraced other than a longshot in Original Screenplay meant that she too went the way of many other actors in his films who received awards attention, but were mostly ignored by the awards groups that matter. She was probably in 8th position, behind Kidman and Jolie, I think the best performance in the film was from Samantha Spiro as Kayla's boss.
My future Almost There suggestions are:
Nicole Kidman - To Die For / Birth
Meryl Streep - The Hours / The River Wild
Robert Shaw - Jaws
Dirk Bogarde - The Servant
Patricia Clarkson - Far From Heaven
For the ages. And a very good movie too, the ensemble, the screenplay with every character perfectly defined, the sense of humor, the bitterness, that ending. Very good.
Philip H. -- That's an interesting idea. I've been reluctant to cover Kunis since I'm not all that fond of that performance, but combining it with an analysis of Hershey might do the trick. I always forget about that surprise BAFTA nomination for the latter.
Mr Ripley79 -- Of those options, I'm most likely to do Goodman and Douglas. I know I often stretch the definition of Almost There, but I'm not sure that Swank qualifies, even under my iffy justifications. I do like that performance, though.
Frank Zappa -- Oh, Keaton is certainly on he cards. Especially since I've never watched that film and hers is a fascinating case. Would she have been nominated for that had ANNIE HALL not existed? Considering that Best Supporting Actress nod the film did get, I think so. Also, you'll be happy to know Penélope Cruz was Oscar-nominated for VOLVER.
sirjeremy -- I've already done an Almost There on Kidman's TO DIE FOR work. I've also written extensively about her BIRTH turn for the tribute we did for the actress last year.
Regarding your other suggestions, I've wanted to write about Streep in THE HOURS for a long time, but the actress' work has been extensively explored by other TFE writers over the years. Not sure if I can justify the retread.
As much as I love Shaw in JAWS - he's my pick for the win that year - I can't justify him into an Almost There case. He didn't receive a single nomination for anything. Indeed, no JAWS actor was honored anywhere.
Bogarde and Clarkson are definite possibilities.
Thank you all for the suggestions.
Peggy Sue -- Glad I'm not the only one who likes this movie and performance. I know Jean-Baptiste is beloved by many beyond this comment section, but it's still nice to see a positive note for an article celebrating her and Leigh's movie.
If there is any justice in this world (which there isn't), Best Actress should've been a three-way race between Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Fernanda Torres, and Demi Moore. But alas.
SirJeremy's suggestion of Shaw is an interesting topic.
Maybe a different post could cover it for the films 50th anniversary this year,its one of the best films ever made,one of the best of the 70's,much imitated,parodied but the acting often goes underdiscussed.
Everyone in that film works.
Scheider is a perfect everyman,never too heroic,never too off putting and cowardly,should have been a best Actor nominee over Whitmore
Shaw is Quint simple,that Indeanapolis speech would have been Oscar clipped for it's life if it was released now and he would have easily won the Oscar.
Dreyfuss is giving us full Dreyfuss before it existed,totally likeable and not movie starry,they wanted Jean Michel Vincent or Jon Voight or someone equaly blonde and handsome but Dreyfus's nerdiness works in the films favour.
Hamilton perfectly blind to the threat,
Gary very believable as the wife,not much arc and not a whole lot to do but just has a natural chemistry with Roy and the kids,
Backlinie the first victim gave us one of the best openings to a film and went through hell to acheive it,perfect horror actressing,
Lou Fierro as the mother of the boy who is eaten gives a good cameo with a killer Ruby Dee style slap,a true one scene wonder and just everyone else is perfect.
Can't you tell I love this film.
I never understood why no-one esp Shaw got alook in anywhere considering it's cultural status,that film changed Hollywood forever good or bad and there's arguments for both but it did.
I really liked the movie. It's not on the same level as Another Year, Secrets & Lies, Naked or Happy-Go-Lucky, but I still enjoyed it a lot.
I think Marianne Jean Baptiste is wonderful in it and completely deserved an Oscar nomination. Could've easily replaced Erivo or Gascón. Depression can express itself in many different ways, constant anger being one of the most common ones. So, at least for me, her interpretation of the character really worked.
The movie is extremely depressing, no pun intended. And I appreciate movies that tackle these issues in ways that feel realistic and relevant, and not commonly seen. I also like that this seems to be the beginning chapter of Pansy deconstructing whatever it is that's hurting her.
I love the end. The balls to end that way. No catharsis, no saccharine, no message. Very unlike Anora.
What was I thinking? Probably that she was "almost there" for the win...
Marianne is great in this; she is in my top 5-7 finish for the year.
However, I think this might be Mike Leigh's weakest movie. It's still good but I think the dialogue is weak in some spots. Usually, I am interested in his side characters but in this, they feel to me as distraction from Pansy's screaming.
In the end, I feel I understand her enough but I need a bit more. Also, the first 20 minutes or so are testing my patience but I am glad I got though it till the end.
As acclaimed as Jean-Baptise's performance is lauded, Hard Truths is a hard sit. I feel tt Kidman, or maybe Anderson or even Jolie is the next in line to the Best Actress line-up.
If the KSG's debacle happens a few wks earlier during the nom voting period, we'd probably see ano more deserving contender in the mix.
If there was no room in Lead, MJ-B should've just slip into the Supporting Category.
Academy members and the voting bloc doesn't seem to care. Must get that award through any means fraudulent means possible.