Review: 'Hard Truths' gives director Mike Leigh a chance to create an indelible — if insufferable — character, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste room to make it brilliant

Every few movies, the director Mike Leigh collaborates with an actor to create a diamond of a character study — hard, cutting, multi-faceted and undeniably brilliant. 

That pantheon includes David Thewlis in “Naked” (1993), Imelda Staunton in “Vera Drake” (2004), Sally Hawkins in “Happy-Go-Lucky” (2008), Timothy Spall in “Mr. Turner” (2014), and now Marianne Jean-Baptiste in “Hard Truths.”

Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, who lives with her construction worker husband, Curtley (David Webber), and their son, a quiet giant named Moses (Tuwaine Barrett). Pansy has a loving sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin), a hairdresser who has two adult daughters, Aleisha (Sophia Brown) and Kayla (Ani Nelson), who hold down jobs in the city.

As we first encounter Pansy, she’s quite insufferable. She complains incessantly about everything — from the banana peel Curtley leaves on the kitchen counter to the grocery customers behind her in line. Her remarks are always devastating, with insults that would make Larry David applaud. The audience’s first impulse, and it’s a good one, is to laugh at Pansy’s misanthropic life.

As Leigh and Jean-Baptiste dig deeper into Pansy’s life, the audience starts to understand the roots of Pansy’s constant anger, and we start choking on those chuckles. The key scene comes when Pansy reluctantly accompanies Chantelle to the cemetery on Mother’s Day, to visit the grave of their mum — about whom Pansy, the older of the sisters, still holds a lot of unresolved anger and pain.

Much has been written about Leigh’s process, in which he rehearses for weeks with his actors, developing the characters’ mannerisms and motivations together, before the camera starts rolling. Jean-Baptiste has worked with Leigh this way before, producing her breakout performance in the 1996 drama “Secrets and Lies.” Here, they turn Pansy from an irritable punchline to a sympathetic figure of deep loneliness, fear and self-loathing — one that Jean-Baptiste invests an amazing amount of love and attention, with breathtaking results.

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‘Hard Truths’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, January 17, at Megaplex at The District (South Jordan). Rated R for language. Running time: 97 minutes.