The Reel Review
An insufferably angry, lonely and depressed London woman shares with her sister that she fears that her alienation of her loved ones has turned them against her, when her family gathers to commemorate Mother’s Day. Marianne Jean-Baptiste stars in director Mike Leigh’s mental health drama.
Nearly three decades after her Oscar-nominated performance in Leigh’s Secrets & Lies, Jean-Baptiste gives a tour-de-force performance as the immensely off-putting and ironically named Pansy, an anxiety and rage-filled woman who constantly bullies her withdrawn husband and adult autistic son. Her ire is also directed at total strangers – a furniture store shopgirl and customers, fellow shoppers in the checkout line at a grocery store, a man waiting for her parking spot and even her doctor and dentist. Her vitriol is at times darkly humorous despite her character being so incredibly terrible.
So not surprisingly, Hard Truths is a difficult and uncomfortable watch that tediously lumbers along. It’s more of a really depressing character study than a story, especially when Pansy’s sterile house and sad family is compared to the joyful life of her sister and two adult nieces. There is no real resolution – only a dour treadmill of misery, anger and sadness with an intentionally ambiguous and abrupt ending.
REEL FACTS
• Marianne Jean-Baptiste is the first person of color to sweep the Best Actress trifecta, winning the New York Film Critics, Los Angeles Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics.
• Marianne Jean-Baptiste received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her collaboration with director Mike Leigh in 1996’s Secrets & Lies. Michele Austin also appeared in that film as her character’s best friend.
• Hard Truths is the final collaboration of Leigh and his longtime cinematographer Dick Pope, who died of heart failure shortly after filming concluded.
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