Written by Dilan Fernando

Warning: The following review is of a film that is part of TIFF 2024 and may contain spoilers for Hard Truths. Reader discretion is advised.

A thick exoskeleton; inside soft, delicate, and sweet. Thus, likening crabs to mothers. Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a married housewife with one son. Jean-Baptiste reunites with director Mike Leigh 28 years after Secrets & Lies (1996) in his new film Hard Truths (2024); a triumphant testament to the existential dread that floods from motherhood. Leigh weaves a beautiful tapestry of motherhood’s later stages where every tick on the maternal clock is deeply felt, creating a limbo. The film examines the individual relationships surrounding matriarchs, comparing them to the strength of familial bonds. Leigh, being one of the best slice of life filmmakers, vividly captures the everyday mundanity of suburban life and mines for the drama within each of its inhabitants.

Let’s analyse the opening scene: Sounds of the city echo. A slow dolly shot follows a man on a bike down a suburb stopping on the corner of an intersection where a well-kept house sits. Parked on the roadside next to the house is a work van with another man loading tools. The bike man stops, loads his bike into the van and the pair pile in and leave. Cut to the master bedroom of the house, a woman (Pansy) jolts awake. Pansy’s way of awakening shows her in a constant defensive state. With this scene Leigh manages to establish the cyclical nature of life, isolation, and the lack of communication within marriages.

From this point onward in the film, Pansy is shown cleaning, reorganising, and performing other household tasks. The undercurrent throughout this montage is the reserved anger (inner turmoil) that is subtly regarded with each huff, mutter, and exhale. Pansy’s 22 year-old unemployed son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) spends his time eating, listening to music, and passively showing an interest in aeroplanes. Pansy quickly shows her way of combating the world and her anguish by tearing into people with an acidulous tongue. (Note a scene where Pansy after yelling at a shop assistant sits silently in a parking lot in her car contemplating. Another driver appears thinking she’s about to leave. When she’s unresponsive he goes into a verbal rage slamming the hood of her car with his fist before leaving. Pansy’s silent as he drives away, her head follows him. This gesture shows both respect and empathy.) The moments in the household depict not a mother who’s contemptive of her life but who seeks empathy.

The daily routine of family members - Moses, whose only peace is on silent walks. Pansy’s husband Curtley (David Webber), whose strong, laconic, presence and job as a plumber limits his need to vocally communicate. Pansy’s sister Chantelle (Michele Austin), who owns a hair salon and partakes in the tradition of beauty shop gossip acts as an emotional crutch for her clients. Pansy’s nieces Kayla (Ani Nelson) and Aleisha (Sophia Brown), who like their mother are warm, bubbly, welcoming, and display the closeness and sisterly bond they share discussing topics of love and work. The nieces’ sisterly bond creates a possible insight to the cause of the distant relationship between Pansy and Chantelle which is realised after a moving scene at a graveyard (the best scene in the film) revealing the deeper emotional layers of its characters. The graveyard scene recalls lines spoken earlier by Chantelle’s hair client looking in the mirror at her waning vanity, “Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen. I don’t show any of the stresses in my life.”

The way in which women like the client, Kayla, and Aleisha deal with distress is through venting to and discussing their frustrations with those dear to them. Otherwise, they too suppress their stresses though maybe not to the degree that Pansy does. Following the graveyard visit, Chantelle invites Pansy to her home for a mother’s day luncheon. At the luncheon Pansy is quiet, distant, and communicates through body language as if her voice has lost its effect. The further Pansy recedes into isolation, the family grows more silent, leading to the conclusion both providing the audience with some closure and an opening to try to close the film for themselves.

Let’s analyse the penultimate scene: Leigh uses similar imagery to the opening scene, with a key difference — the symbolism of the placement of the van on the street. The man on the bike leaves after a day’s work. The repetition of the sounds of the city echo throughout the scene emphasising the impunity of the inhabitants of the city while the drama between the film’s principal characters unfolds.

During the Q&A following the screening I was fortunate to ask Mike Leigh, “Did you always envision the end to be suspenseful?” He responded, “Yes, there was never any other ending.”

Dilan Fernando graduated with a degree in Communications from Brock University. ”Written sentiments are more poetic than spoken word. Film will always preserve more than digital could ever. Only after a great film experience can one begin to see all that life has to offer.“