After period pieces Mr Turner (2014) and Peterloo (2918), Mike Leigh returns to contemporary drama in Hard Truths. Widely praised as a powerful, hard-hitting portrait of conflict in an Afro-Caribbean British family, the film blends raw emotion with dark humour.

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The story features two middle-aged sisters, Pansy (played brilliantly and fearlessly by Marianne Jean-Baptiste in her first Mike Leigh film since Secret and Lies (1996, shown by Richmond Film Society in 1997), and Chantelle (Michele Austin). Pansy is a deeply unhappy and relentlessly angry woman who doesn’t have a good word to say about anyone or anything. Her long-suffering husband, Curtley (David Webber) and reclusive, unemployed son, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), remain largely monosyllabic in the face of Pansy’s tirades.

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By contrast, Chantelle is cheerful, easy-going and warm and enjoys a close and relaxed relationship with her two adult daughters. Despite their very different characters, the sisters are close and some of the scenes where they are together are the film’s most powerful. Gradually we begin to realise that Pansy’s hostility towards the world masks the inexplicable fear and despair that she feels. Leigh’s sensitive, compassionate exploration of ordinary people’s lives and their contradictions makes for an unsettling but at times very funny tragi-comedy.

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Thinking about Hard Truths and Pansy’s character made me wonder whether Leigh’s latest film reflects and increasingly troubled and angry world. Yet it has an uplifting side.

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Rotten Tomatoes describes the film as “this expansive film from a master dramatist takes us into the intensities of kinship, duty and the most enduring of human mysteries: that even through lifetimes of hurt and hardship, we still find ways to love those we call family”.

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In an interview with Vanity Fair, Mike Leigh talked about his films being about experiences foreign to his own. "It's just about people. It's about all of us in our good and less so good aspects," he said.

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The film has won several awards, including Best Lead Performance for Marianne Jean-Baptiste at the 2024 British Independent Film Awards and Best Actress from the Chicago Film Critics Association. It was one of the Official Selection films in the 2024 London Film Festival and has also received numerous nominations at BAFTA, the Critics’ Choice and the international film festivals of San Sebastián, Toronto, Rotterdam and New York.

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Previous Mike Leigh films shown by RFS include Bleak Moments (1971 shown in 1974), Naked (1993, shown in 1994) Career Girls (1997, shown in 1998) and Topsy-Turvy (1999, shown in 2002).

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Claire Cameron