The person behind the pain

But that's the magic trick Leigh pulls off. If you've seen any of his greatest films—Mr. Turner, his sun-dappled 2014 study of the great and allegedly ornery Romantic painter J.M.W. Turner, or his offbeat 1990 comedy Life Is Sweet, or the other film he made with Jean-Baptiste, the piercing 1996 family-reconnection drama Secrets & Lies—you won't be surprised that he makes it work, but you won't fully understand how. Though all his films are marked by emotional generosity, somehow, mysteriously, no two of them are alike. Every character is a unique and splendid oddball, meaning that collectively, they can drive us crazy in myriad ways. For those of us who love Leigh's films, that doesn't drive us away—it draws us closer.
Even so, Jean-Baptiste's character in Hard Truths, a Caribbean British woman named Pansy, is a special case. In our first glimpse of her, she awakens in a darkened bedroom and opens the drapes with a slashing motion; the sunlight and pigeons outside are an affront, the first of her many grievances. Her husband Curtley (David Webber) has left for work. Her son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) tries to tiptoe out for his walk. She barks at him, ordering him to put the kettle on for her tea—but not to fill it up, as that's wasteful. This is only the beginning of her litany of grievances. At the dinner table, her monologue fixates on the way a neighbor dresses her baby in an ensemble outfitted with pockets: “What's a baby got pockets for? What's it going to keep in its pocket, a knife?”
BIT BY BIT, Leigh fills in Pansy's backstory. She has a sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin), a hairdresser and mother who's as cheerful as Pansy is sour. Their mother has been dead for five years—Pansy hasn't processed her grief, but that's not the whole of her problem. She's plagued by myriad aches and pains. Are these mo...