Housewife Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is not happy. She is agoraphobic, a hypochondriac, and paranoid about animals, birds, insects, plants, and flowers. She is confrontational with everyone, especially her plumber husband Curtley and her unemployed son Moses, whom she thinks is wasting his life. Her sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) runs a thriving hair salon. A single mum, she enjoys life, and lives harmoniously with her daughters Kayla, who works in cosmetics, and Aleisha, a trainee lawyer.
Leigh’s new film explores family relationships in the post-pandemic world. After over a decade spent making his two epic period films Mr. Turner and Peterloo, Mike Leigh returns to his ongoing exploration of the contemporary world with this tragi-comic study of human strengths and weaknesses.
The Garden Cinema View:
Mike Leigh’s return to contemporary social drama is a late career triumph, and one of the best British films of recent years. The cast, led by an astonishing performance from Marianne Jean-Baptiste, have emerged from Leigh’s improvisational workshop process with deeply authentic characters. This tactile sense of realism opens up the film into extremely funny, and also difficult and emotional spheres. Cinematography from the late, great, Dick Pope presents a flat and sterile North London. Such high-key lighting also serves to bring out the skin tone contrasts in the predominantly British-Caribbean cast.
There is a tender approach to even the most difficult of characters that feels particular to Leigh, and Hard Truths reminds us of his unique talents in chronicling British lives.
