Film Talk: Jean-Baptiste leads the charge in Hard Truths
Sometimes, just sometimes, it’s in the blood. With this young actor, no truer words were ever spoken.
Son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, Jack Quaid was born as the pedigree child of Hollywood royalty. Following in his parents’ footsteps, he has certainly begun to make his mark.
Starring opposite Karl Urban, Erin Moriarty and Antony Starr in sensational satirical superhero drama series, The Boys, Jack The Lad came into the public spotlight with his portrayal of everyman Hughie going down a storm.
This of course wasn’t the first time we’d seen him fulfil his on-screen birthright, with Quaid also having had a minor role in The Hunger Games.
Following the success of The Boys, Jack O’Lantern has secured voice actor stardom with successful stints in Star Trek: Lower Decks and My Adventures with Superman.
In film, he has appeared in Logan Lucky, starred as Richie Kirsch in the fifth and sixth flicks in the Scream franchise, and he also played theoretical physicist Richard Feynman in Academy Award slammer, Oppenheimer.
This week, we’re seeing boy wonder Jack-Be-Nimble step into his own silver screen leading role with Companion – a flick that puts him opposite Sophie Thatcher in a tale of AI horror.
Taking our top spot this week however is Mike Leigh’s new comedy-drama, Hard Truths. Starring the ever-incredible Marianne Jean-Baptiste alongside Michele Austin, this one is showcasing the best of British talent in a story of familial strife.
Alongside both of these flicks, we’ve got the lowdown on Saturday Night – Jason Reitman’s new biographical comedy-drama charting the shenanigans prefacing the premiere of one of America’s most famous TV delicacies.
Variety is definitely the spice of life this week, and it’s time to dive into the veritable smorgasbord that is. Lights, camera, action...
HARD TRUTHS (UK 12A/ROI 12A, 97 mins) ****
Released: January 31 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)
Writer-director Mike Leigh’s fascination with the misery and bile-speckled mirth of human nature comes full circle from his pithily titled 1971 directorial debut, Bleak Moments, about a socially awkward secretary who cares for her sister.
In Hard Truths, the 81-year-old filmmaker once again focuses on the relationship between siblings and fashions, potentially, his most unsympathetic and unlikable character: a 50-something mother and wife in the suffocating grip of depression that causes her, with the slightest provocation, to vociferously lash out at everyone around her.
She rages against charity workers, who proposition strangers outside stations and supermarkets (“Cheerful, grinning people, I can’t stand ‘em!”), clothes for infants (“What’s a baby got pockets for?”) and her own GP, who leaves his patients in the capable hands of a colleague while he attends the funeral of a close relative (“Why’s he bothering with the dead when he’s got the living suffering here?”)
A barnstorming lead performance from Marianne Jean-Baptiste electrifies every frame of Leigh’s brutal and unsparing London-set tragi-comedy and tests the limits of our compassion and understanding.
Her onscreen alter ego is monstrous, callous, insensitive and almost intolerable – an unfiltered mouthpiece for frustrations of the modern world who says what she thinks and damn the consequences – yet by the film’s conclusion, she is also painfully vulnerable.
In arguably the film’s most touching scene, the venomous harridan accepts comfort at a graveside from her sibling: “I don’t understand you, but I love you.”
We can relate to that uncomfortably conflicted sentiment.
Pansy (Jean-Baptiste) lives with her henpecked plumber husband Curtley (David Webber) and unemployed adult son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), both of whom are easy targets for her percolating rage.
They suffer her tirades in melancholic silence.
In stark contrast, Pansy’s sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) is a warm and outgoing hairdresser and single mother, who cheerfully embraces noise and mess as she raises daughters Aleisha (Sophia Brown) and Kayla (Ani Nelson).
These sisters are bubbly, quick-witted and go-getters: Aleisha is a lawyer and Kayla works for a cosmetics company under a disparaging boss (Samantha Spiro) who rejects her pitch of a coconut-free formulation (“It’s a non-starter”).
A Mother’s Day celebration unites two branches of the family under one roof and sparks fly.
Carefully shaped in improvised workshops between director and cast before cameras rolled, Hard Truths is dominated by Jean-Baptiste’s anguished matriarch and her incendiary outbursts.
She confidently surfs tidal waves of splenetic dialogue, pausing for breath to allow other cast to quietly make their marks.
The script hints at intergenerational trauma as the root of Pansy’s suffering, but like many of Leigh’s films, nagging questions are unanswered.
COMPANION (UK 15/ROI 15A, 97 mins) ***
Released: January 31 (UK & Ireland)
In a few brief years, voice and gesture-prompted virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa and Gemini and artificial intelligence chatbots have become casually embedded in the fabric of our everyday lives.
No longer the stuff of science fiction and fantasy, these complex learning models have become invaluable best friends that set reminders, quickly research important information, play music, make travel plans and check the weather forecast.
Written and directed by Drew Hancock, Companion is a survival thriller that solders together narrative circuitry from Ex Machina and Don’t Worry Darling to imagine the next logical step in this queasy amalgamation of human and mechanised worlds: lifelike androids designed to cater to our every whim, especially carnal desires.
The picture’s fresh-faced heroine, played with gusto by Sophie Thatcher, is blissfully unaware that she is at the mercy of programming that prevents her pleasure-giving automaton from rebelling against a cruel and selfish master, who can alter her level of intelligence with one swipe of a finger on a digital screen.
Hancock’s darkly humorous script barrels at full speed into horror territory in a bloodthirsty second half with predictable twists that pit Thatcher’s terrified creation, now self-aware, against cold-hearted humans intent on shutting her down with a bullet to her computer brain.
The balance of power shifts between hunters and prey but our sympathy remains firmly rooted with the high-tech Stepford Wife.
Iris (Thatcher) meets Josh (Jack Quaid) in her local grocery store where his awkward and amusing attempt to flirt results in a tsunami of oranges spilling across the fruit and vegetable aisle.
This embarrassing mishap only endears Josh to Iris and the pair fall deliriously in love.
Iris nervously accompanies her beau to a weekend getaway with friends, hosted at the country home of sleazy Russian businessman Sergey (Rupert Friend), who claims to have “fingers in many pots”.
Sergey is currently dating Josh’s friend Kat (Megan Suri) and she is strangely cold and hostile towards Iris.
The home is remote, situated in unspoilt wilderness several miles from the nearest neighbours, guaranteeing peace and quiet for the gang including Josh’s friend Eli (Harvey Guillen) and his foodie boyfriend Patrick (Lukas Gage).
Underlying tension between the two women explodes by a lake and Josh intervenes, telling Iris to go to sleep.
It transpires that Iris is an automated companion rented from Empathix Robotics, who has been programmed to protect human life at all costs.
Companion is a briskly paced battle royale between man and machine, which mines humour and discomfort from the fractious power dynamics of modern relationships.
Thatcher and Quaid are well matched, the latter revisiting a Machiavellian side glimpsed in recent instalments of the Scream franchise. Hancock strips away dramatic fat from his picture’s exoskeleton to restrict the overall processing time to a sadistic and sprightly 97 minutes.
SATURDAY NIGHT (UK 15/ROI 15A, 109 mins) ***
Released: January 31 (UK & Ireland)
Unfolding almost in real time, director Jason Reitman’s breathlessly staged comedy drama imagines the pulse-quickening backstage chaos before the taping of the 1975 launch episode of NBC sketch show Saturday Night, which would be rechristened Saturday Night Live.
Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan draw inspiration from interviews with living cast and crew, who experienced the nail-biting tension firsthand, to parachute us into the middle of escalating madness at NBC Studios in Manhattan.
“Are you OK?” an NBC staff member (Finn Wolfhard) asks producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) before he heads into battle with dismissive executives and mutinous crew.
“Ask me in 90 minutes,” he smiles.
Thus, Reitman’s picture starts a stopwatch at 10pm on October 11, 1975 and for roughly the next hour and a half, the pace rarely slackens. Several scenes are choreographed as unbroken single shots on a handheld camera that skilfully bobs and weaves between backroom conversations, capturing the persistent hum of adrenaline that needs to detonate with purpose at 11.30pm with the warmly welcoming catchphrase, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”.
