DRAMA; 1hr 37min
STARRING: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin, David Webber, Tuwaine Barrett
Truth be told: Jean-Baptiste
London housewife Pansy Deacon (Jean-Baptiste) is a caseload of rage perpetually itching to explode. Her defeated husband, plumber Curtley (Webber), and unemployed son, 22-year-old Moses (Barrett), are her primary targets, but if they’re out of range, anyone is likely to cop it.
Pansy’s hairdresser sister Chantelle (Austin), on the other, gentler hand, could hardly be more empathetic and relaxed, tending to her clients and two adult bubbly daughters (Ani Nelson and Sophia Brown) with the ease of deep-seated contentment. How can these two polar opposites be sisters, and what mother of all train wrecks must have slammed into Pansy to sour her so utterly?
Reuniting with writer-director Mike Leigh 29 years after the force majeure of Secrets and Lies, an incandescent Jean-Baptiste’s performance is so phenomenally horrible it hurts to watch. “Why can’t you enjoy life?” an exasperated Chantelle demands at a visit to their mother’s grave, where Pansy, true to truculent form and riddled with childhood issues, is snarkily reluctant to be. “I don’t know,” Pansy admits, subsiding into the exhausted tears that are a tonal turning point. “I’m so tired … I want it all to stop.”
Pansy is convinced her family hates her. It might be simpler for them if they did. But that’s not how master observer Leigh is inclined to roll in a piercing character study you’re unlikely to forget: at the cringeworthy Mother’s Day lunch that follows the graveside meltdown, the hardest truth to absorb is that, for whatever ineradicable reasons, the only person who hates Pansy is her own anguished self.
