HARD TRUTHS
FOUR STARS Pansy is an angry woman who doesn't shy away from telling people what she thinks, no matter how rude she gets.
DRAMA UK English #HARDTRUTHS Starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin
Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is an extraordinarily angry woman and she’s not shy from telling people what she thinks - the first of many hard truths are levelled at her husband, her son, at strangers in the supermarket. It’s also clear to us that Pansy is suffering clinical depression and needs professional help, but no one seems willing to put that hard truth to her. Or if they have it was a while ago and aren’t willing to fight that battle again. Her family is gun-shy, traumatised, scared of setting her off, scared of being her target. As the title implies, this is going to be hard going.
But that’s Mike Leigh, one of Britain’s most iconic filmmakers and one who's more than willing to tell audiences a hard truth or two over the years. He’s crafted a couple of large scale historical dramas, but is best known for small-scale, contemporary explorations of hard fought working class lives. Films like HAPPY GO LUCKY or the acclaimed SECRETS AND LIES (also starring the exceptional Jean-Baptiste).
Pansy lives in a featureless home with a featureless back yard - all clean surfaces, plate glass and clipped grass. She is terrified that insects or animals (read ‘outside world’) might get into the house, her sanctuary. An intruding fox sends her apoplectic in a scene that would be funny if it wasn’t so awful. It sets the tone for the film; there’s comedy in Pansy’s articulate outbursts but there's nothing funny about someone so horrible, so cruel. “What does a baby need with pockets?!”, she berates her husband, a man who like their son, has been reduced to stricken silence after years of Pansy’s wretched behaviour. They simply have no idea how to behave or how to help.
Then there’s sister Chantelle (a beautiful nuanced performance by Michele Austin), a well-meaning hair-dresser with a big heart who seems to occupy an alternate universe; loved by her clients, neighbours and daughters alike. Their’s is a life filled with joy and happiness, direction and purpose, it’s the complete opposite of Pansy’s. In a rare moment of respite from the vitriol, Chantelle holds her sister explaining that while she doesn’t understand her, she loves her. It’s touching, but it’s not enough. Not for Pansy.
After an hour or so of endless rage, you might wonder where all this is heading. We get closer to the source on a trip to the sister’s mother’s grave which goes someway to explaining the ‘why’ but Leigh is not going to let us off the hook. Denied a three-act resolution, he doesn't give us big, cathartic scenes of relief, just a couple of moments with a glimmer of hope. Yet in such a reflective story anything else would feel contrived: lives don’t have a tidy reckoning, they just keep moving along. The softest outcome we get is Leigh’s quiet call for understanding that no one, his film’s most sobering hard truth of all, no one can help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.
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