Directing: A-
Acting: A
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Marianne Jean-Baptiste previously teamed up with director Mike Leigh for the stellar 1996 drama Secrets & Lies, a film about a Black woman who was adopted and surprised to discover her birth mother was White—and her birth mother is surprised to discover her biological daughter is Black, having mistaken which of the two men she had sex with six weeks apart was the father. Watching that film, I found myself wishing we could have learned more about the Black family she was adopted into, even though the “secrets & lies” of the title were very much a logical focus of the biological, White family.

It’s the closest I got to any criticism of that film, which is totally absorbing, heartbreaking, and packed with stellar performances. Now, 28 years later (this is technically a 2024 film, we can talk about the stupidity of delayed regional release dates another time), Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Mike Leigh have teamed up again for Hard Truths, which almost serves as an answer to that lack of Black family representation in the earlier film. This time, the focus is indeed on a Black family, and Jean-Baptiste is a matriarch of sorts, albeit a truly miserable person who everyone else she knows tiptoes around.

The Mike Leigh approach to filmmaking is a fascinatingly unique one. Reportedly, he develops a script collaboratively with his entire cast, settling on character arcs across the board through improvisation in early rehearsals. Leigh has a script finalized before they actually start shooting, which is perhaps why he still gets sole script qriting credit—but, for an old White guy writing a story about a Black family, this very much lends an aspect of authenticity to the story itself: none of these actors would be delivering these sterling performances if any of it didn’t ring true, especially after guiding their own characters’ directions in the early stages of development.

How the Black experience differs from others is touched on in both Secrets & Lies and Hard Truths, albeit very subtly and briefly in both cases. Hard Truths is much more about how Pansy (Jean-Baptiste) is anxious, depressed, and filled with suicidal ideation—none of these words are ever uttered by any character in the film, underscoring how it’s better to show rather than to tell. Instead, Pansy is heard many times saying things like, “I just want it all to stop” or commenting on how she’d like to just go to sleep forever. Pansy doesn’t necessarily set out to make every human interaction in her life a confrontation, but it’s what seems to happen. We see this from the very first scene in Hard Truths, as she lives with a husband, Curtley (David Webber), and a 22-year-old son, Moses (Twain Barrett), both of whom are beaten down just by living with Pansy.

Curtley is the most mystifying character in the story, a guy who works as a plumber and comes home to his wife’s aggressive negativity and never challenges her, or even responds. I’m still baffled by, but thinking about, the moment he takes the flowers their son has gotten Pansy for Mother’s Day, and just tosses them out into the middle of the backyard lawn. Moses, on the other hand, is the character I found myself empathizing with the most: emotionally stunted, worn down by a mother who doesn’t understand why he has no dreams or aspirations. A scene late in the film where a random young woman blithlely strikes up a conversation with him provides a glimmer of hope.

The relationship Hard Truths focuses the most on, though, is that between Pansy and her sister, Chantelle (Michelle Austin—who played Jean-Baptiste’s character’s best friend in Secrets & Lies, incidentally). Shortly after we are introduced to a miserable Pansy and her miserable husband and son, Leigh cuts to who we soon learn is Pansy’s sister, Chantelle, and her two daughters, Aleisha (Sophia Brown) and Kayla (Ani Nelson). The contrast could not be more stark: Chantelle and her daughters are a happy, fun-loving family, quick to smiles and laughter.

All of them are reticent when it comes to dealing with Pansy, of course—all except for Chantelle, who has an easy rapport with Pansy, and has an easier time letting Pansy’s aggressiveness roll right off of her. In a key scene where Chantelle does have a bit of trouble with it, the two of them are visiting the grave of their mother, who only died a few years ago. Pansy is complaining about how often people ask why she can’t enjoy life, and Chantelle counters, “Why can’t you enjoy life?” Pansy instantly shoots back: “I don’t know!”

To some degree or another, we all know a person like this. Pansy is a particularly extreme example, igniting arguments in the checkout line at the grocery store, or just waiting in her parked car for some guy looking for an open spot to come along and yell at her about whether she’ll be leaving soon. It’s almost as though Pansy has a sort of battery inside her that can only be recharged through confrontation. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, but leaving the theater, it was pointed out to me that this is a story about a woman with untreated depression. Suddenly it all seems so obvious.

The cast is fantastic across the board in Hard Truths, but Marianne Jean-Baptiste deserves special attention. There’s a scene in which Pansy sort of cracks, slow at first to build into laughing maniacally, shifting seamlessly into heaving sobs. It’s the only time in the entire film we see pansy laugh or even crack a smile, and it’s utterly heartbreaking—it’s the prime example of what elevates this film to something better than the sum of its parts. Her performance alone is worth the price of admission.

Mike Leigh isn’t exactly known for movies with much in the way of uplift. He makes movies about deeply unhappy people, but with a curious knack for sprinkling in truly funny bits here and there—even in the case of Hard Truths. Still, this film does end on a truly downbeat note, with the suggestion that people like Pansy don’t tend to change. Not without treatment, anyway. But this film was something I found to be an emotionally cleansing experience.

*Some families have no choice in facing* Hard Truths.

Overall: A-