Hard Truths: A Review

 

HARD TRUTHS

The fraught relationship between siblings is well-chronicled in Hard Truths, a movie that is true to life while still finding humor and heart within it. 

There could be no two different set of siblings as sisters Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and Chantelle (Michele Austin). Pansy, married to generally quiet Curtley (David Weber) and lay-about son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) is always on edge. Short tempered, crabby, cantankerous, Pansy is never shy about expressing her perpetually negative views about everything and everyone towards anyone within sight. She insults perfect strangers for moving too slow at the checkout line or coming up to her at a furniture store despite them being furniture store employees.

Chantelle, with two adult daughters, is a gregarious, outgoing hairdresser. While the sisters do love each other, they see the world totally different. As the fifth anniversary of their mother Pearl's death comes closer, Chantelle pushes Pansy to join her at the cemetery to pay their respects and grieve. Pansy is noncommittal but eventually goes to the cemetery with Chantelle. Here, Pansy lets her defenses down slightly, admitting that she felt Pearl favored Chantelle and that no one in Pansy's family genuinely loves her. As the sisters go to Chantelle's apartment to celebrate Mother's Day, Pansy continues to struggle with relating to her relatives. Will Pansy accept that she is loved, or will she allow her misanthropic worldview to poison the potential to build up a good life with Curtley and Moses?

"I don't understand you, but I love you," Chantelle tells Pansy. That sums up both Hard Truths and all family dynamics. There are many siblings who, despite growing up in the same home, end up on different paths, believing different things and ultimately being polar opposites. Hard Truths presents us with these two women who share a bond but who also are mysteries to each other. Writer/director Mike Leigh captures that strange unit known as family with Pansy and Chantelle, flawed but connected.

It takes a great skill to make a seemingly unlikeable character sympathetic to amusing. Marianne Jean-Baptiste was absolutely wonderful in Hard Truths. Her Pansy certainly speaks these hard truths (as she sees them anyway) to everyone, whether they want to hear them or not. She does not care if others see her remarks as insulting. To her way of thinking, everyone would benefit from her wisdom. Part of the fun in Hard Truths is seeing random people that Pansy is forced to interact with endure her constant criticisms and complaints the best they can. Except for one man who yells at her about whether or not she is leaving the parking lot (or car park in Britain), no one actually yells at Pansy. Workers attempt to grit their teeth as Pansy berates them for one thing or another. Strangers at checkout lines grow belligerent. However, Hard Truths captures so well how people endure someone haranguing them for the smallest of faults.

Yet, despite how difficult Pansy is, we do feel for her because we see that deep down, she finds the greatest faults within herself. Her fears of being unloved, her sense of personal failures, perhaps her fears of living (captured by a bit of agoraphobia and other real or perceived ailments) all reveal someone who struggles in life. At one point, I believe Curtley or Chantelle asks her, "Why can't you enjoy life?". Pansy is a woman trapped in her own prison, but whether she can escape it is hard to say. 

At the Mother's Day brunch the extended family has, Pansy starts laughing and crying. Her emotional shifts surprise to alarm her family, but it shows what a performance Jean-Baptiste gave. Her ability to show Pansy crack just a touch holds your attention.

Jean-Baptiste is matched by Austin as Chantelle. As Pansy is the product of the Moon, Chantelle is the product of the Sun. Her warmth and delight in life, her daughters and her clientele lighten the film. Chantelle is not blind to the world, and she also endures Pansy's constant criticisms of the world. Yet she does so with gentle efforts to nudge her sister towards a positive worldview. Chantelle loves people, and that makes her quite a pleasant person. Oddly, for all the harshness that Pansy has, I do not remember her being highly critical of Chantelle, at least as she is with everyone else, even Curtley and Moses.

Pansy nitpicks at her sister. She even, albeit softly for Pansy, tells her that she thinks Pearl favored Chantelle over Pansy and harbors resentment over that. In that cemetery scene, however, we see how they are still affected by Pearl's death. Pansy was displeased to be the one who found their mother dead. Chantelle, quietly and with some tears, tells her she wishes that it had been her and not Pansy to have that burden.

Hard Truths is also well-acted by everyone in the cast. Webber's Curtley and Bennett's Moses make their characters equally believable as the long-suffering husband and the son almost broken by his mother's lack of genuine maternal care.

I found that despite Hard Truths' brief runtime of ninety-seven minutes, the scenes of Chantelle's daughter Kayla (Ani Nelson) attempting to convince her employer to fund a line of coconut-free beauty products unnecessary. I think Leigh was attempting to have a counter to the relationship between Pansy and Chantelle by showing how well Kayla and her sister Aleisha (Sophia Brown) got along. Is it a major flaw? No, but I don't know how well it worked overall.

I was reminded of the relationship between my late mother and her last living sister in Hard Truths. Mom was closer to Chantelle and my aunt closer to Pansy though nowhere near as snappish and insulting. Rather, one had a more upbeat and positive view of life, while the other has a slightly darker, negative idea about the world. They were joined by love, but also separated by how the circumstances that they found themselves in. Hard Truths captures that bond between different people in two wonderful performances. Here, Hard Truths are easy to take.

DECISION: B+