REVIEW: Hard Truths offers devastating depiction of depression
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Director Mike Leigh has created a monster in Pansy, but the point is that she is a monster in pain – and that’s what makes this quite such a compelling watch.
Time and again you just hope we might be on the verge of a breakthrough, a way into her world of anger, overwhelming tiredness and utter loneliness – a world of depression which no one dares name or confront.
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Hide AdThe film is called Hard Truths, and in truth, we don’t get enough context or backstory to her agony, but it’s certainly vividly conveyed in an astonishing performance from Marianne Jean-Baptiste who gives us a Pansy constantly on the verge of a rant or mid rant or devastatingly silent.
The slightest prod is the pretext to a tirade which makes the most random connections as it trashes everything and everyone. The shop assistant gets it; the doctor gets it; the dentist gets it. But above all, her silent husband Curtley (David Webber) gets it, a man who has similarly internalised his own pain; and their morose son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) gets it, a detached young guy rarely out of his earphones and cut off from everyone.
The poignant contrast is Pansy’s sister Chantelle (a really lovely performance from Michele Austin), a hairdresser who listens to her customers and gives them all the support and compassion they need. She is warm and open – and her two grown-up daughters Aleisha (Sophia Brown) and Kayla (Ani Nelson) are in her mould.
Chantelle is desperate to remember their mother on Mother’s Day. She manages to get Pansy to visit the grave with her – but Pansy’s response is typically spiteful and cruel. Chantelle manages to get the family back to her flat afterwards. Her daughters do all they can, but the encounter is painful, Pansy, Curtley and Moses cut off in their own varying degrees of misery. It’s a ghastly watch.
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Hide AdAnd yet time and again, Leigh hints at something breaking through – the fact that Moses buys his mum flowers, the fact that Pansy puts them in a vase. Can they somehow grab these flashes of normality and start to make a connection? Leigh’s skill is that he desperately makes us hope they do.
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