Hard Truths: film review

Once again Mike Leigh scrutinises everyday life and creates a masterpiece.

Pansy (superbly played by Marian Jean-Baptiste) has a default antagonistic approach to life, angrily and aggressively shouting at her husband and son, finding fault with all they do, a behaviour that is repeated when she leaves the house and rows with the doctor, the dentist, the other women in the supermarket queue, the shop assistant in the furniture shop, and a man in a car park. Her immaculate end terrace house is a sterile space, cleaned and tidied to within an inch of her life (she polishes the sofa) but she is frightened of the garden, especially when a fox intrudes into it. She is manifestly desperately unhappy but she has made all those around her unhappy as well: both husband Curtley and son Moses are almost catatonic in their silence.

Her sister's family (Chantelle, wonderfully played by Michelle Williams, and her two daughters Kayla and Aleisha) is the complete opposite. They live, sprawling over the furniture, in a cramped and busy flat with a balcony teeming with plants. Their world is one of easy-going laughter and gossip and joy. 

There isn't a plot as such, just an exploration of the characters and their relationships. But it was carefully structured. It was topped and tailed with Curtley’s sidekick Virgil in the plumbing business cycling and stowing his bike (although there is an epilogue showing both Pansy and Curtley indoors, silent and frozen into immobility). There are some wonderful juxtapositions - sterile tidiness with fertile clutter, sadness and silence with joy and noise, Pansy’s aggressive energy with her collapses into catatonia - and upendings of expectations such as the character of Virgil, derided by Pansy as illiterate, who talks informedly about clocks in a performance that reminded me of Barry Keoghan’s character in The Banshees of Inisherin, the supposed village idiot who quotes French.

The acting was superb, all the main characters were utterly convincing but they were supported by remarkable cameos from the furniture shop assistant, the supermarket cashier, the doctor and the dentist and all the others. This is a tribute to Mike Leigh, a director who can get the very best from his cast.

The direction was also remarkable for the long shots showing nothing happening, heightening the pain of the characters.

This is a slice of literature against a world in which most films are thrillers or whodunnits. It is easily the best film I have seen this year. It has been nominated for two BAFTAs (Outstanding British film - why not Best Film? - and Best Actress) and has been nominated for and won awards from film festivals around the world. I don't suppose it will have any chance with the Oscars, it is too much an art film for that.

IMDb gave it 7.5/10. It received 95% from the tomatometer but only 81% from the popcornmeter (the critics loved it more than the audience). The Guardian, to its shame, gives it only 3/5 because the audience is denied “resolution or closure ... we find ourselves marooned in the bleak cul-de-sac of Pansy’s misery” But isn’t that the point? That’s what is hard about the truth: there is rarely a happy ending. But Hollywood wants froth and tinsel rather than reality.

I saw this film on 4th Feb 2025 at the Beacon cinema in Eastbourne. My viewing pleasure was slightly marred by sharing the cinema with a group of teenagers who found it difficult to concentrate and regularly left and returned to the room. I wasn't surprised they found it hard since they were German on a language school visit. It seemed a steep ask of them. 

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God