Hurt people hurt people, the saying goes, and nowhere is that more evident than in Hard Truths. Directed by Mike Leigh (Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky), Hard Truths follows two sisters who couldn’t be more different. One is Chantelle, a cheerful hairdresser who has raised equally ebullient daughters, and the other is Pansy, a hardened woman who lashes out at everyone from her family to the people queuing up in the grocery. Pansy is brutal, the sort of person you’d roll your eyes at if you were unlucky enough to encounter her in public. But Leigh gives us a glimpse into her internal struggle; nothing too obvious, as is the naturalistic director’s style, but we feel her pain whenever she goes out of her way to avoid the people closest to her, or when she savors a moment alone and hides her tears. There is no linear plot in Hard Truths; instead, it’s a collection of lived moments and ordinary joys and sorrows. It’s also a welcome reflection of our fractured reality. Loneliness, grief, anger, anxiety—these feelings are often inexplicable, and they come out of us in ways that are never immediately understandable or direct. So why should Pansy be? The film is an exercise in sympathy as well as a mirror to our own complicated and invisible hurt.
"Arriving nearly three decades after Secrets & Lies, Hard Truths has the feel of a genuine companion work. Intentionally or not, it expands on, completes, and at times challenges its predecessor."
— Justin Chang
"It’s easy to take Leigh’s work for granted, even minor-key projects such as this, but the hardest truth of all is how irreplaceable he still is in British cinema."
— Leigh Singer
Pansy is a woman so full of rage that every interaction she has devolves into lashing out, whether at her utterly cowed husband and son, or random strangers who have the temerity to address her. In contrast, her younger sister Chantelle lives with her two vivacious daughters and plies a successful trade as a hairdresser, putting clients at their ease all day long. Yet beneath Pansy’s abrasive exterior are hints of a more fragile psyche, one motivated by fear and damaged by repressed pain.
London, present-day. As the death anniversary of their mother approaches, sisters Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and Chantelle (Michele Austin) cope and remember her in different ways.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Period.
The derogatory “angry Black woman” is finally subverted in this moving and nuanced picture.
BAFTA
2 nominations
Spirit Awards
1 nomination
Nat. Board of Review
2 wins
NYFCC
1 win
LAFCA
1 win
