‘Hard Truths’ Review: Marianne Jean-Baptiste Sears the Screen in Mike Leigh’s Carefully Observed Mediation on Black Joy and Sadness | TIFF

Malcolm X once said the most disrespected, unprotected, and neglected person is the black woman. 

One of the consequences of such a state is a severely limited scope of Blackness on screen. With many Black stories contending with either reinforcing or subverting deeply-held stereotypes, it often feels like there isn’t enough room to explore Black identity outside of them, especially when it pertains to mental health challenges.

Although Malcolm X spoke from an American perspective, Hard Truths suggests that the implications defy borders. Mike Leigh’s film, premiering at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, tells the story of Pansy (Oscar nominee Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a middle-aged Black woman living in the United Kingdom. Pansy is a brutal misanthrope, lashing out at anyone who even mildly inconveniences her. While the people around Pansy bristle, her sister Chantelle (Michelle Austin) knows Pansy’s cutting barbs are a shield to mask her grief over the devastating loss of their mother five years prior. That pain and her dissatisfaction with her familial choices have shaped Pansy into the bludgeoning curmudgeon people know and loathe. The question is, can people look beyond the withering blister to the real pain underneath?

Mike Leigh certainly makes a case for audiences to at least be amused by Pansy’s rants and antics. Leigh’s outline approach to scripting allows his predominantly Black cast to craft rhetorical tools that are both lived-in and relatable. Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s chosen tool is a razor-sharp scythe hacking away chunks of flesh from anyone in her path. The film’s first half is a dizzying array of cutting remarks, nasty insults, and broad-spectrum whinging that make Pansy entertaining, if not endearing. However, there are hints that Pansy’s approach to life has mental health implications. She seems to have obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and she complains of ongoing medical conditions that suggest depressive episodes. Even though these moments are folded within the comedy, Leigh renders them through an empathetic lens, acknowledging the absurdity of her diatribes but never making her the visual butt of the joke. 

That empathy carries through the film’s second half, where the depth and scope of Pansy’s underlying trauma are revealed. Leigh uses her grieving process, or rather lack thereof, as a gateway into a small subsection of the Black British psyche, exploring the internal and external factors that can affect one’s mental health. It’s a surprisingly and impressively broad survey conducted across the entire family. Through Chantelle’s daughter Kayla, we see microaggressions within the workplace, while Pansy fears her son Moses risking his safety as a young Black man walking around the streets. Pansy and Chantelle serve as guides through generational trauma as they mark their mother’s death. It is rare to see Black mental health given any space on screen. Seeing so much of it, presented with such care, grace, and even comedy, feels revolutionary. Also crucial to the film’s exploration is unflinching honesty; Leigh doesn’t shy away from Pansy, Chantelle, Moses, or Curtley’s pain, holding them in intimate closeups with few cuts so that we don’t miss a moment of their emotions.

Those impactful moments wouldn’t have been possible without the extraordinary cast at the center of Hard Truths. It’s been nearly 30 years since Leigh directed Jean-Baptiste to an Oscar nomination for 1996’s Secrets & Lies. The highly-anticipated reunion pays off beautifully here. Her performance is intricate and precise, imbuing every line reading with a burst of energy that feels tightly controlled and delightfully unexpected. Remarkable as she is in the first half, what she accomplishes in the second is soul-shattering. She lays bare Pansy’s soul, unvarnished and devastatingly authentic, able to communicate a lifetime of fears and disappointments with one crumpled facial expression. When Pansy allows her emotional turmoil to run free, as she does in the final act, it is arguably one of the most heartbreaking moments captured on film this year. It is more than deserving of recognition in the upcoming awards season.

As extraordinary as Jean-Baptiste is, she doesn’t carry the load alone. Michele Austin’s Chantelle is a joyous salve to Pansy’s third-degree burns, beautifully conveying the joys of British Blackness and the guilt of being a mother’s favorite child. Austin and Jean-Baptiste are excellent together as siblings who love each other despite their struggles to communicate. David Webber also wields a silent look as a weapon as Curtley, Pansy’s husband. While Curtley says little, Webber clues us into years of strain in his marriage to Pansy with resigned expressions and distant eyes. He helps us understand that Pansy’s mental health struggles have wide-reaching effects on her loved ones.

In an industry that still seems to be negotiating what aspects of Blackness are worthy of cinematic representation, Hard Truths reinforces why broadening the scope matters. Pansy’s story is singular, but there are shades of her and her family’s experiences that transcend location and skin color while encouraging empathy and understanding for not only her but for people who look and sound like her. It’s doubtful that this film alone will move the needle away from Malcolm X’s prescient observation. However, it’s enough to encourage hope that we may have made some progress. 

Grade: A

This review is from the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Bleecker Street will release Hard Truths theatrically in the U.S. on October 5, 2024.