Hard Truths

There's a crisis in the family. Marianne Jean-Baptiste is ripping into everyone: husband David Webber for his choice in business partners, son Tuwaine Barrett for being twenty-two and still eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sister Michele Austin for wanting to know if she's going to be with her on Mother's Day when she goes to their mother's grave, sales clerks, doctors, dentists, the fox that's gotten in the back yard, birds. And she's scared and just wants to sleep.

By the end of this movie, I was convinced she had brain cancer that was depressing her past all bearing. But this is Mike Leigh's first movie in half a dozen years. That means you know you are going to get great performances; and Miss Jean-Baptiste certainly gives one here, not caring if anyone likes her. Most of the rest of the cast is reduced to silence, but Miss Austin keeps sweetly not taking no for an answer until she gets some answers. And those answers are as unhappy as the rest of the performance.

I can't recommend this movie to anyone who wants a story with a sense of closure one or another. But if you want to watch a human being in honest pain for an hour and a half, here's your chance.