Hard Truths (2024)
Directed by: Mike Leigh
Premise: A depressed woman (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) oscillates between anger and irritation, lashing out at strangers and her family.
What Works: Hard Truths is led by Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Pansy, a woman who is probably suffering from mental illness and who verbally strikes at anyone in eyeshot in ways that are simultaneously cruel and funny. Jean-Baptiste’s performance is great. She’s reminiscent of Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets in the way her character is cruel to anyone around her but there is also a pathos appeal at the center of her character. Less obviously showy but nevertheless impressive are Michele Austin as Pansy’s sister and David Webber and Tuwaine Barrett as Pansey’s husband and son, respectively. Webber and Barrett’s characters are paralyzed with fear. They are clearly hurt by Pansy’s ranting but they don’t dare stand up to her. It’s a vivid portrait of a family walking on eggshells. Pansy’s family contrasts with her sister and nieces. Scenes of the sister’s family are full of laughter and love and the contrast provides some relief. Pansy and her sister commemorate the passing of their mother and it’s hinted that something happened to them, probably as children, and that is the root of Pansy’s irascibility. The filmmakers don’t spell it out and leave the viewer to speculate.
What Doesn’t: While letting us piece together Pansy’s background and psychology, the filmmakers err too much in the direction of implication and inference. Hard Truths feels incomplete. The movie works up to a confrontation in which Pansy risks losing her husband and reaches an emotional climax with her sister and then nothing much actually happens. The filmmakers want us to engage with the characters and what’s happening to them internally but we don’t get enough material to do that. There’s very little sense that anything meaningful has been revealed. It’s not clear what hard truths have actually been faced. The film ultimately feels rather one-note. Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s performance is very good but she’s limited by a script that doesn’t give her character an arc. The production design of Hard Truths is a little too sterile. This makes sense in Pansy’s home since she obsessively cleans but every other setting of Hard Truths is similarly antiseptic. The spaces don’t appear lived in and the look of Hard Truths lacks the messiness of life.
Bottom Line: Hard Truths has some great performances but the movie underserves its cast. What’s here is a very good character study but the story comes across incomplete.
Episode: #1035 (February 9, 2025)