A Comedy!?: Our Review of ‘Hard Truths’ (2024)

Posted in Theatrical by - January 24, 2025
A Comedy!?: Our Review of ‘Hard Truths’ (2024)

Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is the anti-heroine in Hard Truths and she’s a woman whom most people need a break from. Thankfully, director and writer (?) Mike Leigh gives us such breaks, as he sometimes depicts the characters in her family. One of those supporting characters is Pansy’s sister Chantelle (Michele Austin), enjoying her balcony garden. In another scene she also arguably has the biggest water bottle in cinematic history. It then shows us Chantelle’s daughters Aleshia (Sophia Brown) and Kayla (Ani Nelson), one of them involved in the worst product pitch ever – coconut free cream?! Closer to Pansy is her big son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), still the object of neighbourhood bullying even at twenty-two years of age.

Of course, it all returns to Pansy’s anger and depression, worsening her loveless marriage to her husband Curtly (David Webber). Hard Truths, strangely enough, reminds me of that one scene in The Boondocks that contrasts Black interactions with white ones. The scene shows a Black man arguing with another Black man in ways that white men don’t tolerate. This film presents a counterargument of this especially during the grocery scene, as Pansy loudly answers the phone while in queue. This decision turns into a four way ‘fight’ involving women of three different races who see Pansy as troublesome. This is not like The Boondocks says where certain people just step back and laugh at her.

Pansy is a uniquely negative gravitational force, she drags others regardless of race, and, as I wrote above, her behaviour is symptomatic of some deeper strife. Most critics label Mike Leigh’s film as a ‘beautifully human drama’ so I looked up its other genre classifications. Thankfully, I am not alone in thinking that this is a comedy as it highlights its antihero’s ‘unnecessarily’ heightened emotions. There’s a scene in Hard Truths when, of course, Pansy berates a younger doctor about the shortcomings of medical school. Like what do you mean they don’t teach certain things in medical school, even if you’re kinda right?

Cinema, especially comedies, provide a distance between its viewers and the fictionalized world, in this case, heightened yet realistic. Featuring great character work that I detailed above, it lets us hear characters who can’t listen to themselves. Also, pardon the second strange comparison but this also reminds me of American Horror Story where it’s obvious that Ryan Murphy thinks everyone around him is dumb. There’s a certain ridiculousness that, in here, is mostly good. I’m obviously not British Jamaican like the characters in here but many viewers do hail it for its authenticity.

Or at least, Hard Truths is authentic enough – and I include myself on this – for people who know enough Black people. It feels real even with supporting characters like the way Chantelle’s daughters Aleshia and Kayla behave. During a Mothers’ Day lunch, they’re already caring for their guests the way that, perhaps, Chantelle taught them to. Seeing Black characters under the white gaze is inevitable but this film almost made me question what I was seeing. Light spoilers, but there’s also a post credits scene that made me double take. I feel a bevy of reactions as I watch Pansy insult people as she exists within this fictional world.

A cynical version of myself thinks that Pansy as the focal point in Hard Truths makes viewers look at the other characters. As she behaves at a certain level and volume, the possibility of her slowing down feels like a foregone conclusion. But even if the arc feels archetypal, at least this film gives us its version of Pansy’s Jesus moment. It answers why she’s like the way she is easily, but that leads to questions that are just as interesting to me. It goes without saying that the supporting cast deserve just as many flowers as Jean-Baptiste, who deserved an Oscar nomination that she didn’t get. And lastly, that Dick Pope’s final cinematographic work beautifully captures bourgeois malaise.

Hard Truths comes to select Canadian theatres.

This post was written by
While Paolo Kagaoan is not taking long walks in shrubbed areas, he occasionally watches movies and write about them. His credentials are as follows: he has a double major in English and Art History. This means that, for example, he will gush at the art direction in the Amityville house and will want to live there, which is a terrible idea because that house has ghosts. Follow him @paolokagaoan on Instagram but not while you're working.
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