PalCinema Review: Hard Truths

Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays a miserable woman in Mike Leigh's latest film.

January 9, 2025

FILM: HARD TRUTHS

DIRECTED BY: MIKE LEIGH

STARRING: MARIANNE JEAN-BAPTISTE, JONATHAN LIVINGSTONE, MICHELE AUSTIN

RATING: 2 out of 4 stars

By Dan Pal

Almost thirty years ago, Mike Leigh directed Marianne Jean-Baptiste to an Oscar nomination for the great film Secrets & Lies. She played a black woman who searches for her mother only to find that she is white. With that film, and many others such as Another Year and Vera Drake, Leigh has been known for developing rich characters and pointed dialogue. My favorite is Happy-Go-Lucky from 2008 which features Sally Hawkins as a terminally upbeat young woman learning how to drive. His new film, Hard Truths, takes almost the opposite approach with his main character. Baptiste plays Pansy, a married woman who prefers to stay in bed due to her “health issues.” When she does arise, she needs to keep the home that she shares with her husband Virgil and their grown son Moses in tip top shape. Even more than this she spouts off constant complaints about them and everyone else in the world. She may be the angriest character ever portrayed on screen.

A number of the initial scenes are somewhat humorous because of her almost Larry David style rants that she places on a cashier, customers in line, and a doctor who is filling in for Pansy’s regular physician. Unlike David though, her lines are harsh and full of venom. Contrasting this is her sister who works as a hairdresser and is a beacon of light for her own customers and family. There’s a warmth associated with her that we don’t see with Pansy. While her own family might experience some difficult moments on their respective jobs, they have all learned to roll with the punches and focus on the positive side of life. Pansy has seemingly no capacity for any optimism. Her world is in need of structure but the people around her keep messing it up – or, in the case of Virgil and Moses, sit in silence while taking Pansy’s incessant verbal abuse.

The problem with Hard Truths though is that we remain in the same position with them for most of the film. Pansy’s rants are constant and after a while quite exhausting to see and hear. She attempts to bring everybody down. If there is a turning point in the film it is when her sister asks her to join her on a visit to their mother’s cemetery plot. Clearly, something happened there that has forever damaged Pansy but Leigh never quite fleshes it out for the audience. Even the final act of the narrative leaves much of this dangling for tired viewers to figure out. It doesn’t make for a very satisfying experience.

Baptiste is a fire storm as Pansy and while the character occasionally sinks into depression, we don’t get enough to make us really feel anything for her. Aside fro Pansy’s sister’s family, we don’t get much depth to most of the other characters, including Virgil and Moses. The actors who play those roles are only required to react, stone-faced, to most of what Pansy says and does.

One could argue that this is a film about the different ways in which people communicate their frustrations. Pansy and her family either keep it bottled up or explode with anger. Her sister and daughters let things roll off them, for the most post. They seem pretty well adjusted. Hard Truths illustrates just how destructive the opposing perspective can be.

The problem is that we’re not left feeling like there’s been a significant turnaround for Pansy by the end. She can sit and stare out at her high fenced backyard and remain miserable but why do we have to?

Hard Truths opens theatrically this week.

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