Reuniting with Oscar-nominated SECRETS & LIES star Marianne Jean-Baptiste and returning to contemporary London for a story inverse to his festival favourite HAPPY-GO-LUCKY (Screening Series 2008), the latest from seven-time Oscar-nominated auteur Mike Leigh is bracingly tough, darkly funny, and pierced with insight. Shifting between various members of an extended Black family in London, HARD TRUTHS is a psychologically rich ensemble film as only Leigh can cultivate.

Hypersensitive to the slightest possible offence and ever ready to fly off the handle, Pansy (Jean-Baptiste) does not ingratiate. She criticizes her husband Curtley (David Webber) and their adult son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) so relentlessly that neither bother to argue with her. She picks fights with strangers and sales clerks and enumerates the world’s countless flaws to anyone who will listen, most especially her cheerful sister Chantal (Michele Austin), who might be the only person still capable of sympathizing with her. As the film peels back Pansy’s pain and the daily fallout left in its wake, we wonder if a breaking point will come for the family.

This being a Mike Leigh film, Pansy’s orneriness frequently inspires a chuckle, while the diverse responses from members of her family speak to the complexities of grappling with a loved one’s grief and chronic disappointment. The film’s meticulous attention to its characters’ subtlest behavioural shifts infuses every scene with tenderness, so that even as it refuses simplistic resolutions, HARD TRUTHS leaves us with a genuine understanding of who these people are, and why even the most frustrating of them deserves some care.

—Robyn Citizen, Toronto International Film Festival guide