Best Actress Watch: Raves for Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths

I had a feeling when I read the synopsis of the kind of character Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays in Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths. The main reason being the complexity of the role is rare for a Black woman in film. It just is. There seems to always be a need to elevate or produce aspirational or suffering women. Stories about ordinary women struggling with an ordinary life is rare.

We saw this last year with American Fiction wherein the lead character was also allowed to stretch out with the full spectrum of the human experience without having to carry the responsibility of the past, present and future on his shoulders.

In Hard Truth, Jean-Baptiste plays an angry, miserable woman who is mean to everyone. At least, that’s what it sounds like. For that, she has earned an enthusiastic response in Toronto. Here are some sample headlines:

Jean-Baptiste’s Pansy sounds Vera Drake-like, which probably means she’s a slam-dunk for Oscar nomination.

Says Richard Lawson:

She is suspicious and, like many people with unmodulated anger problems, deeply afraid. She reasonably fears for her son’s safety in a nation of racist policing, but is less rationally terrified of her perfectly pleasant backyard, warily eyeing any animals that alight on the grass or wander in under the fence. Pansy regards the world as a hostile place and thus she is hostile to it.

And Clayton Davis says:

Marianne Jean-Baptiste is Worthy of Another Trip to the Oscars for Her Brilliant, Biting Performance in Mike Leigh’s ‘Hard Truths’

Says Caryn James:

The woman at the centre of Mike Leigh’s brilliant new film is a living misery, especially to herself. Pansy, played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste in a fierce and deeply-felt performance, is constantly angry, yelling at everyone from her husband and adult son to store clerks. There is little plot in Hard Truths, but there is a trajectory. While Pansy seems like a harridan at first, she comes to be heartbreaking in her sadness, her fear of life, her sense of being persecuted by the world. Jean-Baptiste has an even better role than she did as an adopted daughter searching for her mother in Leigh’s Secrets and Lies (1996), a quietly powerful turn that earned her an Oscar nomination. Here, she brings both dynamism and understanding to the prickliest of characters, in what is sure to be one of the best performances of the year. 

A great showcase role for an underrated but talented actress.

The Best Actress race might come down to Marianne Jean-Baptiste vs. Mikey Madison. Angelina Jolie is in there too. Possibly Karla Sofa Gascon. Those are the strongest performances of the year, at least for now.