Hard Truths

Thirty years after their Palme d’Or winning collaboration on Secrets and Lies, filmmaker Mike Leigh and actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste reunite for an absorbing, multi-layered drama set in contemporary London. Jean-Baptiste is dazzling as a woman in crisis, struggling to communicate with her baffled family.

“People, I can’t stand them!” exclaims Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) as her family gawp around the dinner table. It’s a typically confrontational line from a character who spends much of Hard Truths unleashing bile – picking fights, berating her own son, cursing at pigeons. Yet this anti-heroine, who could easily be unbearably misanthropic in other hands, becomes over the course of Mike Leigh’s searing latest feature, something altogether richer, transformed through an alchemical collaboration between actor and filmmaker into a magnetic study of grief and perseverance.

For Hard Truths, Leigh turns his gaze back to the present, from a recent streak of period dramas (Mr Turner, 2014; Peterloo, 2018). In contemporary London, Pansy lives in a scrupulously tidy home with her plumber husband and adult son. Yet despite this cosy stability, Pansy is struggling with spiralling rage and depression. As the anniversary of their mother’s death looms, Chantelle (Michele Austin) attempts to break through her sister’s cantankerous shell, triggering a painful family reckoning.

Leigh and Jean-Baptiste first worked together on the Palme d’Or winning Secrets and Lies (1996), which also secured Jean-Baptiste an Academy Award nomination. Hard Truths sees the pair reunite for another absorbing drama, anchored by a daring, career best central performance.

– Rachel Pronger

Trailer

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