Hard Truths
Updated: Feb 23, 2025
Mike Leigh’s post covid drama is a heart shattering showcase for Marianne Jean-Baptiste.
Pansy (Baptiste) wakes up in terror and anger every day leading a life of hypochondriac cleaning and sleeping as well as aggressively belittling her 22-year-old son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) and her silent handyman husband Curtley (David Webber). In the lead up to Mother’s day where her more tender and joyful sister Chantal (Michele Austin) invites Pansy to visit their late mothers grave, Pansy goes out into the world, criticising and picking fights with everyone who approaches her, from shop keepers, to the customers in the queue, dentists and doctors. Her outbursts on the surface are toxically hilarious but her unstoppable hatred for the world exposes a hidden despair and isolation that she can’t break out from. While Pansy is the central subject, in classic fashion Mike Leigh widens the scope to the lives of the rest of her Afro-Caribbean family, by contrast her sister and nieces who face their own challenges, are still able to dance around together in laughter which only aggravates Pansy’s frustration more.
The route of Pansy’s depression is left unanswered, but many clues are left to build the picture for
ourselves. Could it be post covid paranoia and alienation, or the fact that her marriage is falling apart, much seems revealed in Pansy’s hesitation to visit her mother’s grave. “Haunted” is the word she uses when standing over her grave with Chantal, by the sight of her mother’s corpse, a difficult childhood, or the presence of death and age overbearing her mind? Flowers are a key symbol, centrally framed in both contexts of mourning and gifting for Pansy. Baptiste miraculously expresses the mixture of both gratitude and devastation in one scene where Pansy starts laughing hysterically that gradually morphs into uncontrollable weeping.
Pansy is another vigorously dramatic character in Leigh’s canon very in line with David Thewlis Johnny from Naked (1993), or the exact opposite of the cheery Poppy from Happy Go Lucky (2009), needlessly spewing a heightened pessimism that consumes everyone around them. Pansy’s character seems so alienated and cold that she her very presence poisons every room she enters, but her aggression is a consequence of her brokenness which is more than recognisable, she has been so defeated by pain that she cannot conceive any empathy. The little comfort she does receive comes from her loving and patient sister. “I don’t understand you, but I love you” Chantal endearing tells Pansy in loving embrace, a true word of wisdom to take to heart. Whatever the many possible reasons that have shattered Pansy’s being will no doubt have resonance with any living person. To show love to someone who chooses every day to unleash their anguish on everyone around them, even to those who care most for them can be a herculean task, but if we too can adopt a lenient shoulder as Chantal demonstrates then maybe there is still room for breakthrough.
Hard Truths is a polished new drama by British social realist maestro Mike Leigh, who maintains a delicate touch in drawing out powerful and lived in performances channelling the comical and tragedy of life in balance. It is a heavy performance-based film, with Baptiste delivering cynical rants but even more deadly silences between. In an emotionally ravishing cliff-hanger the audience is left asking: How far gone is Pansy?
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