When the Cannes and Venice film festival lineups were announced, both omitted Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths from their lineups. Rumours spread that it could be an underwhelming addition to the director’s impressive oeuvre; Leigh’s projects were often seized upon by these prestigious festivals, who treated his delicate character studies with cinematic reverence. One question now preoccupied his fanbase: Would Hard Truths upend his otherwise unimpeachable filmography?
Hard Truths is the story of Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) a curmudgeonly Londoner, struggling with an unnamed chronic illness and determined to dominate a domineering world. Her husband (David Webber as Curtley) and son (Tuwaine Barrett as Moses) are mostly quiet onlookers, scared to participate in these battles, but Pansy isn’t the villain that they pretend – or even, she pretends – she is. With Leigh’s long-standing ability to blend real people and real conversation, every scene in Hard Truths is lent infinite meaning, stretching out to encompass more than these people in this place, more than London, more than England. Leigh’s skill is somehow letting every lonely person there ever was, burst through in uncontrolled spurts. The relationships in Hard Truths are wondrously complicated, weighed down by worlds of interpersonal history. Within the first five minutes, my various preconceived worries were seamlessly assuaged.
Part of what initially obscured critical analysis of Hard Truths was the flat digital imagery caught in promotional stills. Indeed, every moment is steeped in the character’s bare, over-lit suburban homes. For lack of a better description, Leigh’s recent offering is the most made-for-TV his films have ever looked (including the ones that were actually made for TV). Ultimately, this is all in service of visually embodying a country so steeped in unrecognised longing that it produces characters like Pansy – rigid with pain. Hard Truths looks like a London largely drained of colour and life, a city experienced by people whose city is gradually fading away, replaced by lifeless, private apartment buildings.
In the latter half of 2024, Leigh’s frequent collaborator and cinematographer, Dick Pope, died. Hard Truths will be his last offering, and despite initial assessments it is an unmitigated triumph. These are two creatives enshrined in a perfect collaborative vision. As in their previous work, climactic shots illuminate the strange, oftentimes painful interconnectedness between people, communities and the times they live in. Hard Truths is a particularly potent homage to our necessary connection with one another, grappling with the cost of community.

In arguably Leigh’s most venerated project, Secrets and Lies, the characters are all gathered in the Purley’s living room, reckoning with the ugly details of their past and current desires. It is a moment shattered and reflected in countless configurations across his filmography, including in Hard Truths. When Pansy and her family arrive at the home of her sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin), for a Mother’s Day lunch, the two are confronted by the unusual, tender bond they’ve forged as grown women. Both moments are visually defined by wide shots with actors sat in distinctly theatrical positions, seemingly facing camera as much as one another. But this is proof of Pope’s compositional skills – he has wholly blended into the surroundings, treating audiences to a seat at the table.
Leigh’s cooperative method, of writing the script alongside the actors over months of rehearsal, is one that Pope had to develop shortcuts around (it’s difficult to develop the look of a film with no official script and with no potential for storyboarding). In the leadup to shooting, extensive camera tests are carried out, with every possible version of the film’s look suggested and proven, before Leigh decides on its final iteration. What emerges is a process of discovery, collaborators possessed by a spirit of potential and enacting the truest expression of independent cinema. Pope never got to explain his vision for Hard Truths but the airless, beige shots speak to the specific loneliness of its protagonist Pansy keeps her house rigorously tidy, and for the most part her life blanched of any wear and tear; all of it argues that this is an unsubstantial, IKEA showroom of a life.
Hard Truths puts you in the uncomfortable position of living in the white-hot tirade of Pansy’s fury. Everyone is forced to manipulate themselves around her pain with no room for reprise. Curtley and Moses only ever tiptoe from room to room, keeping their gazes bent down, creeping around like ghosts haunting their own house. But by the end, the film opens up – in every sense – to encompass a more hopeful perspective. After a tense Mother’s Day lunch when nothing and everything is decided, Pansy awakens from a nap to soak in the weekend sun refracted through floor-to-ceiling windows. For once she is quiet, letting the beams dance across her inscrutable expression.
This is a beautiful shot, and a stirring expression of Leigh’s purpose with Hard Truths – with all his films, really. Such flashes of sunny potential are only granted after Chantelle and Pansy reach a sisterly truce, as our lives are only meaningful in relation to one another. The bland, unexciting early images were an intentional misdirect, peeling away to reveal a thoroughly optimistic message.
“Hard Truths” is in theaters Friday.