Mike Leigh is nothing if not an expert at conceiving (in conjunction with talented actors) a certain kind of larger-than-life character. Well, larger-than-life within the context of a realist drama. Think of Johnny in Naked, the revolting and terminally ranting man, or Poppy in Happy-Go-Lucky, a young woman perpetually optimistic to the point of threatening her own safety. They are not necessarily the people you meet every day, but they articulate the very real worlds that Leigh creates, often as forms of social criticism.
Hard Truths introduces the newest character in this canon: Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptise). The mother figure in a working-class family that includes the stoic tradesman Curtley (David Webber) and layabout 22-year-old son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), her life seems a nonstop series of indignities both emotional and physical. Flying off the handle with zingers at every person she can––be it her family, service workers, or doctors simply trying to help––she’s a walking powder-keg who creates constant unease.
One wonders if the film is building up some kind of mystery in regards to Pansy’s condition and why she is the way she is, which it provides answers to some extent: post-COVID anxiety, dead mother issues, etc. But in typical Leigh fashion, it presents a much knottier dramaturgy. While, at 97 minutes, it may be the director’s shortest film in four decades, Hard Truths packs in a lot of stuff. Even if Pansy (our well-defined anti-heroine) dominates the film, its narrative ambition makes plenty of side-stops for the members of her extended family, including her hairdresser sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) and her daughters. Extended scenes within Chantelle’s salon, which never build to dramatic crescendos of any kind but create some of the film’s only pockets of happiness, make the world of the film feel more lived in. Moreso, these scenes are why it’s hard to imagine any criticisms of Leigh for making a film so embedded within a Black world when he creates so much space for his performers, never exploiting their race for white-festival-audience-flattering pathos.
The form isn’t necessarily so ambitious as the storytelling, as presented in drab digital cinematography by Dick Pope that captures an austere, depressing (albeit widescreen) world. Fanatics of “late style” will certainly admire the simplicity and patience, though. You could hear some grunting from members of the world-premiere audience as the film’s pace deliberately slows down so much in the last third, but it’s something anyone who’s ever been in a tense family or relationship situation will understand: just how funereal a home can feel because of it.
As to what the titular hard truths of the film might actually be: that sympathy is difficult because it isn’t always immediately rewarding or that trauma is never totally solved, but those feel almost like my own easy answers. I’d always describe Leigh as a prickly humanist––he empathizes with his characters’ problems, but can’t actually solve them.
Hard Truths premiered at TIFF 2024 and opens on January 10 after a Dec. 6 one-week qualifying run.
The post TIFF Review: Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths is a Work of Knotty Dramaturgy and Patient Form first appeared on The Film Stage.
