by Gill Pringle at San Sebastian International Film Festival
Fears, trauma, and family relationships come into focus in Mike Leigh’s existential drama, Hard Truths. The film examines the human condition as the characters struggle and survive in a post-pandemic world. Hard Truths will make you laugh and cry, possibly at the same time.
A true original, it’s almost comical to imagine a version of British director Mike Leigh where he went to Hollywood.
Apart from his historical dramas, Leigh’s films have always been celebrations of ordinary British folk with ordinary problems, “kitchen sink dramas” as they have sometimes been called. His latest film, Hard Truths – competing in the San Sebastian Film Festival’s Official Selection – is no different.
Set in London, it explores family relationships in a post-pandemic world — namely, housewife Pansy, played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, an unhappy, angry woman. Agoraphobic, hypochondriac and paranoid about animals, birds, insects, plants and flowers, she is confrontational with everyone, especially her plumber husband, Curtley (David Webber) and their stay-at-home unemployed adult son, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett).
“You couldn’t make a film like Hard Truths without the most fantastic, brilliant actors. All the actors that I work with are character actors. They’re actors who don’t just play themselves, don’t just perform their own narcissism. They actually are really good and passionate about making characters that are like real people out there in the street,” says the 81-year-old director, who was in feisty form at San Sebastian, the first time he has ever competed at this elegant festival.
Having previously directed Marianne Jean-Baptiste to a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role in his 1996 film Secrets & Lies, he says of their latest collaboration, “We develop the character together, but if I started from the premise of the idea of the kind of person that Pansy is, and I found an actress who was like Pansy, it would be a nightmare, and we’d never make the film.
“But the thing is, that Marianne has got a great sense of humour and is a very generous, open, and passionate person who is able to create somebody like Pansy with total accuracy – but she is not Pansy.
“Pansy is in some way a function or a symbol of the hard times that we’re living in. Because I actually think, if I’m honest, that the condition of the world of these characters – Pansy’s condition, Pansy’s issues – these are universal. I don’t think that they are special to the times we’re in. I think these are part of the universal human condition,” says the director, who has dismissed any notions of retirement despite acknowledging his physical challenges, today walking slowly with a cane.
In a career spanning five decades, Leigh’s films have collected twenty-five BAFTA nominations, seven wins, sixteen Oscar nods, and two wins.
But he has never set out to be a people-pleaser. He prefers to do things his own way or take the highway, resisting interference from anybody.
The result is an eclectic array of work, including Another Year, Happy-Go-Lucky, Vera Drake, Mr. Turner, and Topsy-Turvy, among many others.
Using lengthy improvisations developed over several weeks to build characters and storylines for his films, often even his actors are surprised by the results.
If Hard Truths is billed as a comedy-drama, then the laughs can be painful as Pansy clearly struggles. “Life is a comedy. Life is ridiculous. So, I think it’s very sad, and I think it’s very funny because that’s what life is. So, if people laugh, that’s alright. And then, slowly, the laughter dies away. The main thing is that it’s real, and you relate to it,” argues Leigh, using the analogy of anyone who has ever involuntarily laughed at a funeral.
For Jean-Baptiste, it was easy to adapt back to the director’s rhythms. “I guess it’s like riding a bicycle, isn’t it? After you haven’t been on it for a while, you get on and pedal a bit, and then you start balancing, and it’s fine,” she says.
“It was a gift to work with Mike again. I don’t know of anybody who works like him, who loves actors and supports them. He’s extremely funny and nurturing, actually. He pushes you in a very interesting way. You don’t feel at the time that you’re being pushed or challenged, but you are. There’s no other way to work. It’s all very exciting, and anything’s possible, and I just think that being able to work in this way is a win. Very few actors get to work in this way, developing a character from scratch. So, it’s kind of a win to get your teeth into someone like Pansy,” she adds.
While the intense preparation allowed Jean-Baptiste to go anywhere with Patsy – even imagining some childhood trauma for her – she says candidly, “There’s a whole history, a whole bag of information of stuff that you can just dip into whatever situation that character is put in because you have the tools to be able to act and react accordingly.
“But it’s like when you go to the grocery store, and you encounter somebody like Pansy, and you want to say F-off to them, or you think that person must be crazy, but you don’t start going, ‘Oh, they must have had a difficult childhood’. We don’t do that.
“Maybe if we did, we’d have a bit more compassion for those people. But we don’t, and I think that’s the beauty of this character. It’s not all explained. There’s not the sobbing scene whereby you find out the one thing that made her the way that she is. She’s the way she is because of a lot of stuff,” she says
Family dysfunction, as evidenced in Hard Truths, is part of Leigh’s filmmaking DNA. “I was born in the war, and I grew up in the 1940s and ‘50s. I grew up in a world where honest communication amongst families was rare, which may explain why I make these films. I don’t really know,” he muses.
If the film brings mental health issues to mind, don’t ask the filmmaker to suggest any answers. “Well, this is a widely experienced human condition. If you watch the film, and you think: ‘What are the answers? Where is the help?’ Then that’s absolutely true. But what we don’t do in any way in the film is come up with those answers. Because millions of people experience, in one way or another, this kind of condition in their families, in their relationships, or in themselves,” says Leigh.
“So, we want you to go away from the film with your own hopes and aspirations for Pansy and her situation, rather than us simply bringing it to a comfortable conclusion, if such a comfortable conclusion possibly could exist, which I don’t think it does, within the confines of the film. So, in a way, it’s for you to reflect on and relate to and hope for. But it isn’t a documentary about mental health,” he insists.
Hard Truths is in cinemas 6 February 2025. It is also screening as the Centrepiece at the British Film Festival in November/December, more information here.
