The person behind the pain

IT'S A STRANGE SENSATION, TO END up loving a movie that makes you feel physically uncomfortable for nearly its whole runtime. In Hard Truths, from veteran filmmaker Mike Leigh, Mari-anne Jean-Baptiste plays a woman at war with the world, and herself. She practically vibrates with belligerence: she can't go to the grocery store without having a run-in with the cashier; her husband mostly avoids her; her grown son spends his time locked in his room—his only relief is to leave the house for long walks to escape his mother's angry force field. Why would you care about this woman's story? For much of the film you may be yearning to get away from her. I was.

- BY STEPHANIE ZACHAREK

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