• Director: Mike Leigh
• Screenplay: Mike Leigh
• Cast: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin, David Webber
• Cinematography: Dick Pope
• Editing: Tania Reddin
• Score: Gary Yershon
• Genre: Drama
• Runtime: 97 minutes

Master of the mundane Mike Leigh returns with ‘Hard Truths’, a character study about a grouchy middle-aged woman, Pansy Deacon (Marianne Jean-Baptiste, star of Leigh’s critical acclaimed ‘Secrets & Lies‘), who is perpetually angry at people – berating shopworkers, picking verbal fights with customers waiting behind her in the supermarket queue. She literally wakes up shouting.

Unbelievably so, she has a (long suffering) husband and an overweight son (whose only escape from his mother’s wrath is by taking daily constitutionals around the block). Pansy and her sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) are like night and day; while Pansy rails against the world, Chantelle is warm and considerate. They could’ve come from two different planets.

Pansy is a sick woman – as she keeps on reminding us. Exhausted by chronic fatigue, crippled by social anxiety combined with an compulsive obsession with cleanliness, she’s being kept prisoner by her own illness. Obviously there’s something deeper than the basic surface-level anger; it’s akin to trauma, arising in outbursts of ire.

Jean-Baptiste delivers a masterclass in hostility; Pansy is a real force of nature and her brashness is amusing. She’s an active volcano prepared to erupt at some poor soul. Even in the moments of quiet, she commands the audience’s attention with the anticipation of what vitriol will spew out of her gob. Despite her unbridled rage, she’s not a monster – I have a lot of empathy with Pansy’s struggles with the general public. In fact, I’ve never related more to a fictional person. 

My rating: 8 / 10