22/16
Chronology
Legendary filmmaker Mike Leigh returns to the contemporary world with a fierce, compassionate, and often darkly humorous study of family and the thorny bonds that bind us. The multiple Oscar-nominated Secrets and Lies reunites Leigh for the first time since the film. The stunning Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a fear-ridden, suffering-ridden woman prone to raging tirades against her husband, son, and anyone who looks her way. Meanwhile, her easygoing sister, played by Michele Austin (Another Year), is a single mother whose life is as different from Pansy’s as their conflicting temperaments—and filled with communal warmth from both her salon clients and her daughters. This grand film from a master playwright takes us to the intensity of kinship, duty, and that most enduring of human mysteries: how, even in the face of lifetimes of pain and hardship, we find a way to love those we call family.