Recommends

One of Britain's best loved and critically respected filmmakers, Mike Leigh is a bona fide national treasure.

Since Bleak Moments in 1971, he has become the foremost chronicler of contemporary British life (see Life Is Sweet, Secrets & Lies, Naked, Another Year), capturing the nuances of everyday life with wit, clear-eyed candour and an ability to speak directly to our emotions.

After lauded forays into period drama with Mr. Turner and Peterloo, the writer-director returns to his wheelhouse with Hard Truths, a funny, deeply relatable, incredibly moving study of a modern black British family, anchored by a monumental performance by Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

The acclaimed actor plays Pansy, a bitterly unhappy, belligerent hypochondriac who unloads her anger onto anyone who crosses her path. Her demeanour seems to have drained the life out of her plumber husband Curtley (David Webber) and withdrawn 22-year-old son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), who loses himself on long walks, blocking the world out via headphones. By contrast, Pansy's hairdresser sister Chantelle (long-time Leigh collaborator Michele Austin, excellent) is an empathic, happy soul.

As a Mother's Day celebration approaches and the two families come together, tensions that have been slowly bubbling away rise to the
surface.

Reuniting with Leigh 30 years after their Oscar-nominated collaboration on Secrets & Lies, which also won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, Jean-Baptiste is immense. During the first half of the film, she finds a grimly humorous tone, venting her wrath at doctors, dentists, supermarket cashiers and furniture store sales assistants – her run-in with an irate motorist (Gary Beadle) is priceless. However, as the drama develops, she etches a compassionate, moving portrait of self-pity and pain, conveying the softer side of a deeply damaged woman, sometimes through the smallest gesture.

Avoiding performative histrionics, always rooted in the real, it's a performance that is a front-runner in the Best Actress BAFTA and Academy Award race. As ever with Leigh, all human life is here, glimpsed not only in the joyous interactions between Chantelle and her hair salon customers but also in her warm, playful relationship with grown-up daughters Kayla (Ani Nelson) and Aleisha (Sophia Brown). Look out too for eye-catching supporting turns by Jonathan Livingstone as Curtley's garrulous co-worker Virgil and Samantha Spiro as Kayla's insensitive boss. The film is also a vibrant ode to London, depicting the city in ways it is rarely seen on film.

Critically acclaimed across the board, Hard Truths emerges as an authentic portrait of complex family dynamics that has zero truck with cliché, throwing together two sisters who are polar opposites with completely different responses to life's travails. Watching the sparks fly results in one of Leigh's most satisfying, entertaining films to date.

Witty, tender and poignant, Hard Truths is a modern classic in the making.   Ian Freer

You'll like this

If you enjoyed these films