I have mixed feelings about Mike Leigh's film Hard Truths. To be honest I found the first half quite difficult to engage with. Jean-Baptiste plays an angry woman who lashes out at everyone around her from the people she encounters out in the world to her own family including her grown son, a man who has withdrawn into himself, the implication being due to his mother's abusive behavior. At first there is some humour in watching her berate everyone and scrunch her face into an angry mask of hate. But as it drew on it became sad and perhaps so over the top it was hard to take seriously.
The film starts out at this contrast between Jean-Baptiste's misanthrope and Austin's joyful character, her sister. But quickly this fades as it becomes more and more focused on how damaged and fragile she really is. The film begins to create a character arc for her as she falls apart in the arms of her sister when confronted with the legacy of her mother's death and the whole thing becomes heavy. But quite jarringly any progress made here is regressed by the end.
Leigh's ending is one of the bleakest I've seen in a while. It is both unfinished and rather hopeless. The sister's story sort of gets shoved aside while our central character, who the film makes so hard to empathize with, falls completely apart. There is a lot of pathos here but there is also a lot that is just hard to muster even sympathy for. She is so unrealistically unpleasant that giving her the benefit of the doubt about how hard her life must have been to get her there while we watch her destroy the people around her... well the film just never quite gets us there. It's too short to explore some of the complexities it is asking us to consider so instead it's just a snapshot of someone so unpleasantly angry at everything and nothing. The audience walks out just as frustrated with having to tolerate her as those in her grocery line, the parking lot, the dentist... etc.
Hard Truths
Starring: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin, David Webber, Tuwaine Barrett, Ani Nelson, Sophia Brown, Jonathan Livingstone
Writer/Director: Mike Leigh
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