ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Female Film Critics 24/375

Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Interviews 

Marianne Jean-Baptiste talks HARD TRUTHS, Angry Pansy and Mike Leigh – Pam Grady interviews

Pam Grady , , ,

In 1996, Marianne Jean-Baptiste broke through in a big way in Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies. She received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role as Hortense, a London optometrist and adoptee, who finds her birth mother, a working-class factory worker played by Brenda Blethyn. The actor soon embarked on a busy career in television with roles in such shows as Without a Trace, Broadchurch, Blindspot, and Training Day. But now she’s reunited with Leigh for Hard Truths, playing Pansy, a chaotic woman who expresses her fears and frustrations in the anger that she unleashes on family and strangers alike. To date, she has garnered a slew of nominations and awards, including winning the Best Lead Performance British Independent Film Award. A second Oscar nomination appears to be in her future as lightning strikes twice in her alliance with Leigh, the master of improvisational cinema.

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Reviews 

HARD TRUTHS – Review by Diane Carson

Diane Carson , , ,

Hard Truths dramatizes a brittle, angry British woman, Most people most of the time suppress the urge to verbally assault others, however tempting the impulse. Polite exchange usually wins out. Well, meet Pansy Deacon whose social graces appear nonexistent in writer/director Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths. In a magnificent, courageous performance, Marianne Jean-Baptiste manages to reveal Pansy’s pain amidst her outbursts.

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Festivals Reviews 

HARD TRUTHS (TIFF 2024) – Review by Liz Braun

Liz Braun , , , , , ,

Who gets to be happy? Why is joy so natural to some and misery to others? Filmmaker Mike Leigh has investigated this territory before, and in the character of the furious Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), center of his new movie, Hard Truths, he has created a fountain of grief, anger and disappointment in life. Hard Truths is more difficult than most Mike Leigh movies, and yet it’s a film you just can’t stop thinking about. The director’s work so often shows us what sort of shape we’re all in at the moment; Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s extraordinary performance makes it clear that things are not so great in this world of ours.

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Reviews 

IN FABRIC – Review by MaryAnn Johanson

MaryAnn Johanson 0 Comments , ,

It’s Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, except the jeans are a dress and the dress is murderous, because LOLsob consumerism is killing us, or something. Settling on that theme is merely the result of desperately trying to extract some meaning from this oh-so arthouse, infuriatingly wanky retro exercise in style at the expense of all substance.

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Movie of the Week Reviews 

AWFJ Movie of the Week, Jan. 19-25: CAKE

Nikki Baughan 0 Comments , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Opening Jan. 23, AWFJ’s Movie of the Week is Cake, starring Jennifer Aniston as a troubled woman who becomes obsessed with the suicide of a young woman from her local support group.

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