Hard Truths

A brilliant performance by Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Mike Leigh's latest examination of blue-collar Brits. But do you really want to spend 97 minutes with a hateful, miserable abuser?

I write this review knowing full well it may cheese people off. I don’t relish the prospect.

“Hard Truths” is exactly the sort of film critics are supposed to like. (Currently 96% on the Tomatometer.) It’s the latest from writer/director Mike Leigh (“Secrets & Lies”), who’s essentially made an entire career with empathetic, eye-level portraits of working-class Brits — one which I’ve largely cherished.

But “Truths” is a true test of an audience’s patience.

It’s marvelously acted, particularly the brilliant Marianne Jean-Baptiste (an Oscar nominee for “Secrets”), who plays Pansy Deacon, a middle-aged homemaker who has reached the end of a long rope of depression and spitefulness. She is trapped in a marriage to a man she despises, with a 22-year-old son she loathes, with no discernible purpose or passion in life, and is a germophobe and hypochondriac to boot.

The movie is essentially 97 minutes of Pansy excoriating everyone she comes in contact with in the most vile, hateful language she can think of. She piles it onto her family members, a ceaseless drone of abuse, but seems to take a special delight in seeking out strangers as targets for her vitriol.

In line at the grocery checkout, waiting in a parking lot, even with the healthcare workers striving to help with her myriad complaints of bodily pains — Pansy’s mouth is a fire hose of insults. We’re surprised somebody hasn’t punched her.

I am astounded to learn this film is being labeled a tragicomedy. Certainly Pansy’s existence is tragic. The comedic part, I’m still searching for.

Leigh is a master at creating characters like this, people you can’t stand but are utterly compelled by. I remember in “Secrets & Lies” I was so repulsed by Brenda Blethyn’s character, and yet she was never less than human.

With Pansy, I felt no such connection. She’s simply an abuser with no redeeming qualities. We get a little information about how Pansy ended up in this low state, but there’s no arc of change for her. She doesn’t get any better — or even (inconceivably) worse — but is the same person at the end of the movie she was at the beginning. She seems to have a little bit more awareness of how bad things are, but there’s no glimmer of a desire to grow.

The result is a film that feels like all prologue. It’s the set-up for a story, not the resolution. We don’t need to see Pansy suddenly turn into a well-adjusted, kind-hearted person. But by God, we’re desperate to see just a touch of grace in her. We need to see her take that first step or two.

Instead she, and this movie, remain stuck.

The backdrop is the mostly Black and immigrant community in an unnamed English locale. Pansy is married to Curtley (David Webber), a prospering tradesman specializing in home appliances. They live in a tidy brownstone in a nice neighborhood. Pansy doesn’t seem to do very much, mostly staying in bed complaining about being unwell.

Curtley withstands Pansy’s steady tirades with a pained silence. When she’s not looking he stares at her with wet eyes, wondering where the woman he once loved has gone. It seems just a matter of time until he summons the courage to leave her. We root for him to do so.

Pansy’s primary ongoing challenge is their son, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), still living at home post-schooling. He is smart and has a good heart, but seems to have no ambition. All he seems to do is read, play video games, eat (too much) and go for daily walks, we suspect mostly just to get out of Pansy’s aim of fire for a few hours.

Her one seemingly stable relationship is with her younger sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin). She runs a local beauty parlor where a parade of women get their hair done and complain about the men in their lives. We learn that their mother, who died five years ago, was the primary author of Pansy’s disposition, and she mostly had to raise Chantelle herself.

There is some tertiary storytelling with Chantelle’s daughters, Kayla (Ani Nelson) and Aleisha (Sophia Brown), who have broken out of their blue-collar upbringing and have upscale professional jobs. They’re exuberant and excited about the future, though experience setbacks at work that they gloss over with each other and their mother.

And that’s it. That’s the movie. Nothing really “happens” in the traditional storytelling sense. We follow Pansy about her daily life, carping and crapping all over everybody. Occasionally there is a respite for a bit to see what’s happening with Chantelle’s side of the family. They get everybody together for a Mother’s Day dinner, marked by Pansy’s refusal to eat or talk to anybody.

Forget about if this sounds like fun. Does this even sound like a movie to you?

“Why can’t you enjoy life?” Chantelle demands at one point. “I don’t know,” Pansy responds. No further insight attempted.

I suppose “Hard Truths” is supposed to be a portrait of unhappiness — how it is expressed, with some hints of how we got there. Moses seems destined for a life as depressive as his mother’s, and maybe Chantelle and her daughters will start sliding down in Pansy’s tidal pull as well.

But just depicting dysfunction isn’t interesting. A good movie has go places, tinker with its characters, put them through paces and see what happens to them. They move downriver in their lives. This one just swirls about in a miserable little eddy, the pattern repeating, repeating…

Imagine if you made a film about a drug addict. We spend a feature film watching them doing drugs, getting into trouble, being miserable. They never try to face their addiction head-on, go into a program or to a peer group meeting, but just keeping abusing substances. The last scene is virtually indistinguishable from the first scene, and we suspect we could check in with this character in five or 10 years and they’d be in exactly the same spot.

You want a harsh truth? This movie fails at having a reason to exist.