Cynthia screams, Hortense holds herself together, first by phone and then in person. The camera catches mother and daughter in a long queue outside Holborn station, tracking Hortense as she passes Cynthia unnoticed. Then in the undisturbed dining room, the women sit side by side, eyes looking everywhere but each other. Cynthia says she can’t be his mother because she’s never slept with a black man, before she shows respect and starts crying. We never found out who that man was – .“Oh, don’t break mine .‘eart, darlin'” he cries when Hortense later asks if he was a good man. No wonder Blethyn was awarded for his performance, at the BAFTAs and in Cannes, because it is a more expressive, wonderful performance than the one given to Jean-Baptiste. Yet it is his silence that makes this scene so powerful, his amazing patience should not let his patient mother feel free. ashamed of what he did At the end of the scene, Hortense remembers being told that he was found it’s his mother on the flight back to England from Barbados. .“I just looked at the clouds,” he said.
Straight pansy bolts with a shout at the start of Hard Facts. He went straight to the window and looked through the curtains in shock, watching the pigeons outside. He calls out to his son Moses, admonishing him for filling the kettle with plenty of water and walking. At dinner with Moses and her husband Curtley, she starts swearing: first against .“smiling, happy charity workers asking you for money for their own stupid reasons”, then the neighbor who dresses his dog in a coat and boots (“Why is the dog wearing a coat? He’s got fur, innit?”), and a local mother walking around with her daughter in clothes (“What’s a kid keeping in his pocket? What’s a stick?” .“I love children,” said Hortense quickly, referring to Cynthia Secrets & Liesslowly glancing at the floor conveying the desire for a life not yet lived. The change in volume for Jean-Baptiste is surprising, he immediately asserted that this film is not an extension of the character he had previously played.
There are parallels to be drawn between the two films, especially in exploring the differences between the same family. Chantelle clearly loves her daughters, and their flat is full of laughter and life, compared to the silence and fear of the Deacon household. Apparently Hortense lived a civilized, middle-class life away from the Purleys’ major conflicts – .“Welcome to the family,” jokes Cynthia’s brother Maurice, played by Timothy Spall, to Hortense after his niece’s birthday barbeque goes up in smoke. Both films hinge on a dramatic dinner scene. Hard FactsPansy agrees to go to Chantelle’s apartment on Mother’s Day after she confesses to her sister that she wants everything to stop and is scared. .“I don’t understand you, but I love you,” said her sister, making it clear that she agreed that there was a complicated mess going on because of Pansy’s anger.
Like Hortense at the barbecue, Pansy sits still and stares down. Yet here Jean-Baptiste conveys concern, which builds to wonderful, maddened laughter when Moses tells him he bought her a bouquet of flowers. A sob broke out, louder and louder than any tears Cynthia had shed. Secrets & Lies. The camera pans to everyone around her, with Hortense’s equally stunned silence, before returning to Pansy’s sunken face. It’s a huge burst of emotion, immediately apparent to anyone who has suppressed long-term depression, that’s terrifying and utterly depressing. It feels like an apotheosis, and certainly a catharsis, in the work of Jean-Baptiste.
Hortense is polite, almost too polite, while Pansy is really obnoxious in her way with everyone. At the end of the Secrets & LiesJean-Baptiste’s composure is so relaxed, he chats with his newfound sister Roxanne, played by Claire Rushbrook, whom he plans to take to the pub with. Hortense’s lack of a part in her relationship with her new family makes her extremely endearing. Pansy also begins to change, opening the French doors at the back of her house and breathing in the fresh air. She fills a vase and cuts open the flowers, clearly anxious to do so but in control. The small steps towards freedom of the guards around him. This cinematic diptych will surely be the legacy of Jean-Baptiste’s acting, and while it would be nice to see more of him on this side of the pond, few actors have ever reached the command of imagination, subtlety, and inner complexity that he displays.
