“I love you. I don’t understand you, but I love you.”
Mike Leigh is the master of finding the revelatory and the extraordinary in the everyday mundanity of life. The auteur’s minimalist style and pitch-perfect casting have allowed for some of the most insightful and genuine cinematic character studies of the last 40 years. His latest feature, Hard Truths, serves audiences another slice of realism and flawed humanity with a heaping side of empathy and compassion. It can easily be counted among his very best. Here, Leigh takes a deep dive into the intangible effects of mental illness, the long shadow of formative experiences, and the close connections that both hold us up and keep us down. The result is an emotionally resonant, visceral human drama with an almost painful yet riveting performance from Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Secrets & Lies) at its core.
Jean-Baptiste stars as Pansy, a woman suffering from severe depression who is constantly on the verge of a verbal tirade. Her target could be anyone who has the misfortune to cross her path: a store clerk, her dentist, or even her own family members. She’s pessimism in human form. She loathes almost everything about life: people, animals, and particularly uncleanliness and germs. Her rants are darkly comic, and often she does have a point. But as the film progresses, you slowly begin to glimpse the real loneliness and pain beneath her voluble negativity. She lives with her husband Curtley (played to perfection by David Webber) and adult son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), who have chosen silence as the best way to deal with Pansy’s daily diatribes. You feel sorry for them initially, but you soon begin to realize how much they’ve both physically and emotionally abandoned Pansy to her illness by not lifting a finger to help and support her. They are well-meaning but expect her to handle everything that society places on the backs of women, despite everything she’s going through. Case in point: After a day filled with confrontation and after she has thoroughly lamented her overwhelming stress, the only question posed by Curtley concerns when she’s planning on making dinner. When she say she isn’t planning on making it, he orders in but gets nothing for her. It’s supremely frustrating to witness, but that is the point.
The film juxtaposes Pansy’s family with that of her more optimistic sister, Chantelle (a fantastic performance by Michele Austin). A hairdresser by trade, she’s a single mom who lives in good-natured harmony with her two outgoing, grown daughters Aleisha (Sophia Brown), a trainee lawyer, and Kayla (Ani Nelson), a rising marketing professional at a skincare company. Whereas Pansy is morose and abrasive, Chantelle is gentle and warm—providing kindness and wisdom where required for her many clients, and support for her ambitious offspring. Their home is constantly filled with laughter and warmth, a stark contrast to Pansy’s stark and sterile household.
Chantelle’s positivity carries over into her interactions with her sister. Her love for Pansy is an ever-present thing, and she meets each and every complaint with encouragement and practical advice. It seems hard to believe that two wholly different women could have resulted from the same family but as their past unravels, we begin to understand how dramatically different their life experiences have been.
It all comes to a head on Mother’s Day, when the sisters go to visit the grave of their mother, Pearl. It transpires that as children, brought up by their working single mom, the lion’s share of responsibility fell at the feet of the eldest, Pansy. That seems to have continued as they grew, with caretaking for their elderly matriarch falling to her as well. It’s not surprising then, that Chantelle seems to have had a closer, less fraught relationship with Pearl. Her memories are happy and carefree, whereas Pansy’s are tinged with feelings of inadequacy and failure.
There is an emotional reckoning of sorts at the graveside, giving Chantelle far more insight into her sister’s emotional well-being than she has had previously. After much back and forth and bickering, Pansy finally confesses her seemingly complete inability to enjoy life and the fear that emptiness instills in her. It’s a catharsis of sorts for both, but Leigh is careful to demonstrate that rather than solve anything, it seems that knowledge has further complicated their lives. There is no easy fix for Patsy’s state of mind, and no easy way for Chantelle to help her as much as she wants to. It leaves both exhausted and feeling helpless. It’s an emotionally bracing, powerhouse exchange between two actresses at the top of their game and it might have acted as perfect terminus of sorts for the film, but Leigh pushes the story just a little further, demonstrating that rarely does life wrap up so neatly.
The actual climax of the story takes place at a family gathering after the cemetery, where both sister’s families have come together at Chantelle’s flat. Aleisha and Kayla try (mostly) unsuccessfully to draw conversation from Curtley and Moses, giving space and time to Chantelle and Pansy to contemplate what the revelations at the graveside mean to themselves and each other. It’s a masterfully awkward scene culminating is a full emotional breakdown from Pansy, when she realizes that Moses has purchased her Mother’s Day flowers for the very first time. There should be a sense of joy in finally being appreciated and acknowledged, but Pansy understands she isn’t capable of truly experiencing the intended happiness of the gesture.
It’s this that acts as a turning point for Pansy. She has come to a painful point of self-understanding and on arriving home, she seems determined to make some changes that will help her state of mind. She throws Curtley out of their shared room, and—despite her aversion to germs—places Moses’ flowers in a vase. Mystified by the changes to his wife and his life, Curtley continues quietly on as usual but hurts his back on the job and is forced to come home and ask for help from Pansy. But will she give it? Is there enough love and caring left in their relationship to support new roles of caretaker and patient? Or has Pansy made a clean cut that will leave Curtley on his own to deal with his pain, as she has had to deal with hers? It’s here the film ends, which may seem like an odd choice. But what happens next is up to the audience. There’s a myriad of ways the story could go and all are open to interpretation.
The story as a whole may seem slight at first glance, but there is so much at play here emotionally that there is a constant sense of momentum – a sense of moving forward, even as Pansy herself would rather remain still. In the hands of anyone else, our central character could remain remote and cold, but Jean-Baptiste manages to infuse flashes of charisma and understanding beneath the prickly exterior. You care for Pansy almost despite yourself in the beginning, but as the story unfolds, your compassion for her builds at pace with the revelations of what made her the way she is. It helps too that Austin’s Chantelle cares so deeply for her, that you begin to see Patsy through her more understanding gaze and that you to love her, despite not completely understanding her.
The abrupt ending may be hard to stomach for some viewers more used to happy, wholistic Hollywood endings. But it’s fully in keeping with Leigh’s outlook on the world. His characters are flawed, layered, essentially good people who reside in the messiness and chaos of life. There is pain and anger aplenty, but there are also moments of happiness, of love and understanding too. There is no neat bow, no tiding finality to things. It feels real because it is. With Hard Truths, the prolific director touches on something profound and simple, and the result is a stunning, compassionate portrait of humanity likely to be considered among his very best.
