by Charles Kirkland Jr.
In his 23rd film, British director Mike Leigh reunites with Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Secrets & Lies) to
create a challenging but ultimately compassionate look at modern family life.
Hypersensitive to the slightest possible offence and ever ready to fly off the handle, Pansy (Jean-
Baptiste) does not ingratiate. She criticizes her husband Curtley (David Webber) and their adult son
offense Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) so relentlessly that neither bothers to argue with her anymore. She even picks
fights with strangers and enumerates the world’s countless flaws to anyone who will listen. Pansy’s
sister Chantal (Michele Austin), might be the only person still capable of sympathizing with her.
Her unintentional actions only serve to alienate and isolate her from everyone around her. How long
can Pansy continue before there is a reckoning?
Hard Truths is the latest film written and directed by seven-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker Mike
Leigh. Leigh reunites with Oscar-nominated Secrets & Lies star Marianne Jean-Baptiste and his home
city of contemporary London for a story that is completely inverse to his 2008 festival favorite
Happy-Go-Lucky.
At first blush, as Pansy presents herself as a sincere curmudgeon, spewing vicious and biting venom
toward anyone and everyone about anything and everything, she comes across as an English Archie
Bunker. Her bile is contemptible and hilarious. Until Leigh shows the viewers that there is sincere pain
behind Pansy’s process. Laughter turns to sadness as the audience begins to understand who Pansy is
and where her problems may lie. In typical Leigh fashion, true explanations are absent and the
implications are left for interpretation by the time the film ends.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste is fantastic, even though she spends most of the film on one note. Regardless,
Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy with such fire and anger that the viewers of the film are the ones who
experience the range of emotions to which Pansy seems immune. This role is an intense one which
Jean-Baptiste stated that it was hard for her to deprogram at the end of the day.
The first thought is how Mike Leigh, an eighty-one-year-old, white man even dared to write a story
about Black people. How can this man know what the experience of Black pain looks like well enough to
create a movie about it? The answer must be that Mike Leigh is a student of the human condition. The
story of the movie is about the pain that all of us feel or can feel at any time in our lives. Truthfully,
there are a couple of moments that feel slightly disingenuous to the Black condition but the point is
really to show that we are more alike than different in the way we live our lives.
Hard Truths is bracingly tough, darkly funny, and pierced with insight. Hard Truths is a psychologically
challenging and rich ensemble film about a Black family in London that only Leigh can cultivate. In this
film, Leigh shows that pain is universal no matter what the culture.
Grade: B-