An Oscar-worthy lead performance

In his stunning new drama, Leigh portrays “living, breathing, flawed but good people”, with Marianne Jean-Baptiste starring, in “what is sure to be one of the best performances of the year”.

The woman at the centre of Mike Leigh’s brilliant new film is a living misery, especially to herself. Pansy, played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste in a fierce and deeply-felt performance, is constantly angry, yelling at everyone from her husband and adult son to store clerks. There is little plot in Hard Truths, but there is a trajectory. While Pansy seems like a harridan at first, she comes to be heartbreaking in her sadness, her fear of life, her sense of being persecuted by the world. Jean-Baptiste has an even better role than she did as an adopted daughter searching for her mother in Leigh’s Secrets and Lies (1996), a quietly powerful turn that earned her an Oscar nomination. Here, she brings both dynamism and understanding to the prickliest of characters, in what is sure to be one of the best performances of the year. 

After two historical films, the underappreciated Peterloo (2018) and the dazzling Mr Turner (2014), Leigh returns to a contemporary setting, and in his typical fashion drops us into the lives of ordinary people. Pansy lives in a modest, comfortable house with her husband Curtley (David Webber), who owns a small plumbing company, and their son, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), who rarely leaves his room. Moses clearly has emotional challenges in facing the world, but Pansy considers him a layabout and screams at him, “Don’t you have any hopes and dreams?”. Hopes and Dreams might well have been the title of any number of earlier, gentler Leigh films – consider Happy-Go-Lucky or High Hopes. But true to its title, Hard Truths comes at life from the opposite angle, immersing us in Pansy’s anguished reality. She is so depressed she sleeps much of the day and seems to be a hypochondriac. Her anger doesn’t abate through the film, but increasingly we see that it is a sign of her emotional distress.

Leigh’s strategy of taking us into his characters’ world without prelude or explanation, letting the revelations and backstory waft out, help make his films feel authentic. He seems to have a magical ability to make the everyday captivating to watch, and even creates emotional drama out of Curtley and his assistant struggling to carry a heavy claw-footed bathtub down a flight of stairs.

In a natural and stirring performance, Michele Austin plays Pansy’s sister, Chantelle, a hairdresser who has a laughing, loving relationship with her two grown daughters. Chantelle patiently tries to help her sister, nudging her to come along to their mother’s grave on the anniversary of her death, and inviting Pansy’s family to join hers at home afterwards. But in Chantelle’s house, Pansy sits silently and refuses to take off her coat. Austin touchingly conveys Chantelle’s sadness and helplessness in the situation. She and her daughters also provide context for Pansy’s family. One daughter pretends that a pitch at work has gone well when the opposite is true, an ordinary attempt to save face. But Pansy, refusing to accept that she and Moses need help, denies reality in a much more profound and damaging way. Curtley is a calm presence in the house, and has obviously been worn down by his situation. Webber makes him affecting, but he is the one major character who is a bit underdeveloped. 

Leigh includes some flashes of wit, so the film itself is not depressing. At a doctor’s office, Pansy is furious that she has to see a substitute for her usual physician, and is so volatile the doctor asks, “Are you okay?” Pansy snaps back, “No, I’m not okay, I’m at the doctor’s!” She has a point.

At times, we see Pansy become aware of her own emotional unsteadiness, which makes it all the more painful to witness. She dashes out of a furniture store after berating a salesperson for no reason, then sits in her car catching her breath. The distressed look on Jean-Baptiste’s face says that Pansy knows she is not okay. At their mother’s grave, she admits to her sister “I’m so scared”. But none of the well-intentioned people around her know what to do.

Although the family in Hard Truths is black, Leigh has pushed back on any idea that as a white man he might have been reluctant to tackle the inner lives of these characters. Talking to Vanity Fair he pointed to his many films, including the period pieces, that are about experiences foreign to his own. “It’s just about people. It’s about all of us in our good and less so good aspects,” he said. He and his cast have given us living, breathing, flawed but good people, in a stunning film full of heart and compassion.

★★★★★