In the opening scene of Mike Leigh’s Oscar nominated and Golden Palm winner Secrets & Lies (1996), Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s character sings at her adopted mother’s funeral on a lush cemetery. She then played the mild-mannered and soft-spoken optometrist with a contagious smile who searches for her biological mother (Brenda Blethyn). When she now revisits Mike Leigh’s universe in Hard Truths, she’s a mother herself, but in a complete opposite role: a paranoid, bitter misanthrope who scolds everyone in her path. Once again, Jean-Baptiste is a knockout.
Mike Leigh is back in classic Mike Leigh style after two big, historical films in Mr. Turner (2014) and Peterloo (2018). Few filmmakers have such a keen eye for the ordinary, the tragicomic and the secret streets of London as the veteran British filmmaker. Over the 50-plus years, the auteur has caught urban, somewhat serious worlds with a fondness for the working class in gritty realist style, arisen from kitchen-sink realism. From nocturnal odyssey Naked (1993), the bittersweet Secrets & Lies (1996) and neo-Dickensian All or Nothing (2002) to the angelic abortion woman in Vera Drake (2004) and the free philosophizing optimist Poppy in Happy Go-Lucky (2008). Hard Truths is the first film with a contemporary setting since Another Year (2010). We give a bow, Leigh’s multifaceted and compassionate portrayals always demand our attention.
This time around he portrays a black family somewhere in London, shot by Leigh’s veteran cinematographer Dick Pope in clear daylight. Our protagonist Pansy hates everybody. The mother and wife, in a house with an empty garden on Park Road, can’t stand cheerful charity workers or mothers with fat babies – and nobody escapes her vicious insults. Certainly not her husband, Curtley (David Webber), and their 22-year-old son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) who lives in the same house. They both seems to have entered the silent state long time ago, knowing that it’s not worth arguing against.
When she is not obsessively cleaning the clinically white, blank house, she rests in her bed. Chantelle (Michele Austin), her warm sister, a hairdresser with two bubbly daughters, seems to be the only one left of the well-intentioned people around Pansy who at least tries to understand her, but don’t know what to do.
Pansy must be the most bitter and pessimistic lead in Mike Leighs whole filmography (a complete opposite to Sally Hawkins’ upbeat Poppy in Happy Go-Lucky), and her outburst some of the funniest. When she channels the anger to the dentist or the supermarket cashier and the customers who tries to defend, or when she hurls offensiveness at the couch clerk and customers in the store who put their feet on the sofa, the laughter echoes up to the ceiling. But somehow it gets stuck in the pit of the throat. Pansy is obviously very unhappy, living with constant fear and anxiety. She also has various health issues. Gradually we get clues of why she might feel so miserable, but never defined in full. The Covid-19 pandemic could have been a potential catalyst.
When the film shifts tone, the previous flashes of fun are gone, and the seriousness takes over. The shift starts when Pansy reluctantly accompanies her sister to their mother’s grave on the anniversary of her death. This also references to Leigh’s and Jean-Baptiste’s collaboration in Secrets & Lies – the recently deceased adopted mother, the newly found biological mother and the whole motherhood theme. Apparently, Pansy was the one finding her mother dead and is still grieving her, but she was the less liked child. Michele Austin also played her best friend in Secret & Lies and now her sister, and best friend, in Hard Truths.
The title itself, Hard Truths, is obviously linked to Secrets & Lies. In the end of the 1996 film, Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s character tells her newfound half-sister: “Better to tell the truth, isn’t it? That way nobody gets hurt”. In that film, suppressed truths came to the surface at her half-sister’s birthday dinner. Whereas here Pansy reality only seems to hurt her, and everyone she meets. Yet the actual truth of her depression and anger lays embedded in secrets for the audience to try to figure out. Marianne Jean-Baptiste earned an Oscar nomination for her quietly powerful role back then. She deserves one again for Hard Truths.
Leigh connects his films and knows exactly what he’s doing. When watching a Mike Leigh film, you’re always in comfortable and steady hands – he respects his audience and never judges, or condescends, his characters. They are familiar in a peculiar way; we most probably have met them in life. Even frenzy Pansy.
Grade: B+
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Here’s the trailer of the film.