Hard Truths (12A) |Close-Up Film Review

Director Mike Leigh’s latest film is beautifully acted but very bleak. 

Marianne Jean-Baptiste first made her mark in cinema as a young woman trying to find her birth mother in Leigh’s Secrets and Lies.  Now nearly thirty years later she plays Patsy, a middle aged woman who is pathologically angry with everyone and everything in her life.  

She rarely speaks at anything quieter than a shout and everybody she encounters is at the sharp end of her tongue.  Not just her family but literally everyone – her  doctor, the people serving her in shops, even the stranger in the car park, who politely asks whether she’s about to move her car so he can have her space. She is a nightmare, terrifying but also heartbreakingly sad, because she is obviously suffering from serious depression.   She gives no quarter though to those around her.

Her long suffering plumber husband Curtley (David Webber) and her slow moving son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) are the chief objects of her fury, but her tolerant and even tempered  sister Chantelle (Michele Austin), the only person she seems to be able to have a low volume conversation with, is sometimes also at the receiving end. Chantelle in contrast to her elder sister, is relaxed, placid and even tempered.  She runs her own hairdressing business where she’s much liked by her loyal customers.   Things come to a bit of a head when the sisters pay a visit to their late mother’s grave and afterwards at a family gathering, when it’s hinted that Patsy’s anger may be rooted in the different ways she feels they were regarded when tiny children.  But that’s almost too simplistic.   We are never to discover what is the whole truth at the root of Patsy’s fury.  

One the strengths of the film is how the visuals contribute to the storytelling.  The difference between the sisters is reflected very effectively in their different environments.   Though all the characters are black, this is not a tale of black urban poverty.  Curtley is a good provider and he and his family live in a neat end of terrace suburban house.  Kept obsessively neat in fact by Patsy.   Nothing worn looking and imperfect allowed, nothing really personal, such as mementoes or family photos, nothing out of place.   In the heavily fenced garden there are no weeds or even flowers permitted.  And the sight of a fox on the lawn she sees as a major crisis.

In contrast is Chantelle’s relaxed life in her untidy, slightly shabby flat, which she shares with her two daughters, Aleisha (Sophia Brown), a trainee lawyer and Kayla (Ani Nelson) who works for a skincare company.  And while Chantelle rejoices in her girls’ achievements and shrugs tolerantly when they mess up a bit, poor Moses just slouches around the house with no idea what to do with his life, just trying to avoid his mother’s continual fury. 

The acting, as one might expect in a Mike Leigh film, is almost uncomfortably powerful  in its sense of truth.   It is though not an easy film to watch.   The final shot we have of Curtley, despairing at his inability to reach and help his wife in any way, is totally heartbreaking.   There is one ray of hope however towards the end, when Moses on one of his solitary walks experiences a brief friendly exchange with a young woman.   This could perhaps be a new beginning for him?  Or perhaps not.