Movie Review ~ Hard Truths

British cinema has long excelled at uncovering the messy, resilient humanity of working-class lives, from the unflinching realism in the work of writer/director Ken Loach to the bittersweet intimacy of the unforgettable Secrets & Lies, the Best Picture nominee released in 1996. With Hard Truths, director Mike Leigh (who directed Secrets & Lies, earning a Best Director nomination) revisits this familiar terrain, crafting a searing portrait of familial tension and fractured relationships. Led by a career-defining performance from Marianne Jean-Baptiste (2014’s RoboCop), the film pulls no punches, delivering a deeply affecting exploration of emotional inertia and the bonds that can sustain us one moment and suffocate us the next.

From the outside looking in, Pansy Deacon (Jean-Baptiste) may be a middle-aged woman bitter at the world and anyone who dares to cross her path.  Look closer and observe how she lashes out, even when waking up, and you can see that she’s navigating the choppy waters of a deep depression she doesn’t have the tools to manage. Her marriage to Curtley (David Webber) has grown stagnant, interactions with cheerful hairdresser sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) are tense with unspoken grievances related to their stern mother who died before Pansy could find resolution, and the relationship with her towering but reticent son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett, Back to Black) is a study in unresolved strain. Leigh uses these underlying forces to paint a piercing, unvarnished portrait of a family teetering on the edge of collapse.

Jean-Baptiste’s return to a collaboration with Leigh, nearly three decades after her Oscar-nominated turn in Secrets & Lies, is what acting without fear is all about. As Pansy, she delivers what can only be summarized rather ineptly as a masterclass in pained restraint and tightly wound anger, every glance and gesture is loaded with layers of intimated emotion. Austin, whose character has her insecurities but masks them in a more “socially acceptable” manner, provides a buoyant counterpart with warmth and optimism.  Neither is honestly dealing with what troubles them, and together, they create an authentic bond of modern sisterhood that believably crackles, not cracks, during each confrontation.  The men in the film have few lines, but Webber and Barrett offer performances that stew quietly, their characters serving as almost frustratingly calm reflections of Pansy’s inner turmoil.

Leigh’s direction is as incisive as ever, and his signature improvisational process yields incredibly authentic performances. His innate ability to find beauty in the mundane is on full display, with Oscar-nominated cinematographer Dick Pope (who sadly passed away in October 2024) capturing the beige normalcy of working-class London in a way that feels both solemn yet wrenchingly vulnerable in its simple normalcy. Switching gears from last year’s gilded glitz of Saltburn, Suzie Davies’s production design underscores the story’s emotional stakes, with Leigh preferring visual metaphors of internal chaos in place of hokey expository dialogue that wouldn’t seem as truthful. 

The film’s pacing is deliberate, allowing moments to breathe and characters to unfold organically. While this approach may test the patience of some viewers used to resolution and easy solutions, it ultimately rewards those willing to sit with its discomfort.  I wish more time had been spent drawing parallels between Chantelle’s adult daughters (Ani Nelson & Sophia Brown) and their aunts because, at one point, it felt like Leigh was illustrating how patterns of behavior and pain repeat themselves, but then again, Hard Truths refuses to offer easy answers or tidy resolutions to topics other films would feel required to tie up with a ribbon by the time the credits roll.  Instead, Leigh and company find value in following the inconveniences of human relationships and the often painful process of self-examination.

In Hard Truths, Leigh delivers a film that cuts to the bone, with its emotional honesty and unsparing exploration of depression resonating deeply. Jean-Baptiste gives a towering, unforgettable performance that only confirms the thunderous heights she can climb.  She’s not often given this wide of a runaway to play on and it’s a joy to see her shift gears with such wild, undeniable success.  Developing the character with Leigh they’ve brought to the screen a rarity, a fascinatingly inscrutable woman that you wouldn’t want to bother if you met her in real life but still fascinates and intrigues all the same.  It’s a challenging but extraordinarily rewarding work that reinforces Leigh’s legendary mastery of humanistic drama.