‘Hard Truths’ Review: You Can’t Help but Love a Bitter Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Mike Leigh’s Slender Sketch
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic Some people bring happiness and positivity into the world, illuminating the lives of all around them, and some make flowers wilt and milk curdle wherever they go.
As Pansy, Marianne Jean-Baptiste embodies the latter sort in “Hard Truths,” coming away from her reunion with “Secrets & Lies” director Mike Leigh with her richest character yet — not economically speaking, of course, though we’d all be millionaires if we had a nickel for every blistering complaint that spills from Pansy’s lips. “Hard Truths” arrives more than 50 years after Leigh’s first film, “Bleak Moments,” bookending a career of tough, tell-it-like-it-is looks at working-class British life.
Frankly, that vague-sounding title seems better suited to a Criterion Collection boxed set of his work than to his latest (but not last, we hope) feature.
A return to intimate kitchen sink realism after the grand-scale ambition of several relatively expansive period pieces — “Topsy-Turvy,” “Vera Drake,” “Mr.
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