Dallas Film Now.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste gives a searing performance in director Mike Leigh’s latest slice-of-life drama. 

Pansy is in pain.

She awakes with a startling shout when her husband nudges her in the morning. Throughout the day, she responds instantly and angrily to any perceived or imagined insult. Or the mere possibility of a slight. She takes an expression on any other person’s face as a personal assault upon her body and soul. 

As embodied by Marianne Jean-Baptiste in a magnificent performance, Pansy suffers day and night, lashing out regularly and consistently at her soft-spoken  husband, Curtley (David Webber), a plumber, and her hulking, mostly silent 22-year-old son, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), who mostly just lays around the house, except when he escapes for a daily walk through the neighborhood. 

Pansy regularly complains about a variety of physical ailments, which leaves her in constant pain. She expresses herself in such a disagreeable manner, however, that it’s easy to imagine that her ailments are psychosomatic. 

Clearly, something is wrong with the woman, yet it’s only gradually revealed that she is suffering far more from emotional pain. Even though she denies that she still grieves the loss of her mother, eventually it becomes apparent that her grief is an open wound that has not yet begun to heal. 

Her sister Chantelle (Michele Austin), a hairdresser, is more open about her grieving process, which is reflected in her positive, upbeat relationships with her two daughters. She worries about Pansy, and tries to help her, but Pansy remains defiantly stubborn in her denial of her feelings and refusal to accept assistance of any kind. 

Mike Leigh has been mining the emotional territory of ordinary people for decades, and his delicately precise direction always brings out the best in his cast. who work with him to develop the characters and the script. By all reports, it is a long and often painful process, but it consistently yields cinematic gems. 

Hard Truths is no exception. Pansy is a flinty woman, having long developed the inner strength needed to survive and thrive in a world that is openly hostile to strong women with strong personalities. As a slice-of-life drama, the film offers no easy answers or quick solutions to the emotional turmoil churning inside Pansy. Anyone, though, who has suffered from (seemingly) unexplainable, deep-seated, and sudden pain that instantly embroils and overtakes the soul and causes it to explode in an angry outburst can, unfortunately, relate. 

In this too, sadly, I raise my hand. It’s a long road ahead for Pansy, but a glimmer of sunshine awaits. 

The film opens Friday, January 10, at the Angelika Film Center in Dallas.  For more information about the film, visit the official site.