Miserable but compelling: Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths reviewed 

The central character in Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths is Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), an angry, bitter, late middle-aged woman who rages against everyone and everything. Against her husband, her son, chuggers, dogs in coats, shop assistants, babywear with pockets: ‘What’s it going to keep in its pocket?’ Everyone, Leigh has said, ‘knows a Pansy’. Or is one, he might have added. Or is in touch with their inner Pansy. Why does babywear have pockets?

This is not a cheerful film and, as with Leigh generally, there is no neat redemptive arc. The first thing I said to my companion when it finished was: ‘Well, that was horrible.’ Jean-Baptiste is magnificent, and the film is compelling, and it will linger in the mind, but it is also 90 minutes of watching someone being aggressively unhappy without properly knowing why. This Pansy certainly brought out my inner Pansy. I often wanted to shake her crossly and say: ‘Stop making everyone else’s life a misery and get help!’ She is meant to be a sympathetic figure but I felt sorrier for those who had to put up with her.

Most popular

Douglas Murray

The hard truth about Britain’s soft power

Brendan O’Neill

Why are ‘anti-racists’ silent about Arbel Yehud’s terrible ordeal?

Steerpike

Watch: Richard Madeley grills Rachel Reeves on CV

The film opens with Pansy first thing in the morning, sitting bolt upright in bed, presumably waking from some terrible dream. She lives in south London in a house that is spotlessly clean, but cold and soulless. She has a husband, Curtley (David Webber), a boiler engineer who constantly feels the lash of her tongue, as does their son, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), who is 22 and mostly stays in his bedroom playing on a flight simulator or lying back on his bed while inspecting one of his model aeroplanes.