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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Peter Bradshaw

Hard Truths review – a Mike Leigh classic of day-to-day disillusionment and courage

Angry and articulate … Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Pansy in Hard Truths
Angry and articulate … Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Pansy in Hard Truths. Photograph: Bleecker Street

Those two stark monosyllables in the title are a callback to Leigh’s debut from 1971, Bleak Moments: they lay down an uncompromising and yet also enigmatic challenge. This movie isn’t going to be an easy ride; of course not. But if it promises to reveal hard truths in their simplest and most irreducible sense, then what are these hard truths exactly?

Perhaps the hardest and most obvious truth is that the lead character is suffering from clinical depression and urgently needs to see a professional about it. But no one actually puts that hard truth to her, or maybe they did, long ago, and had it angrily thrown back in their face. And so the second hard truth is that no one can help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.

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