Hard Truths (2024)
Pansy is what Jamaican folks call miserable. She picks fights with everyone, including the checkout girl and other shoppers at the grocery store, the salesclerk at the furniture shop, a man driving through a parking lot who dares to ask her if she (sitting in her parked car) is leaving shortly, and especially her family. Her venom has many targets and no particular rhyme or reason, unless of course it is rational to hate everyone.
Pansy was meticulously crafted by the talented African-Caribbean (Antigua and Saint Lucia) British actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste through a rigorous organic process with her fellow actors and director Mike Leigh. There was no script. Instead, the actors came together and drew from their own wells of experiences to craft a convincing tale about a British Caribbean family living life in the suburbs of London.
An uneasiness builds around the two parts of the family which seems not to fit. There’s Pansy, her husband Curtley (David Webber) a plumber, and their grown, seemingly unemployed son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) who have clearly been beaten down over the years by the incessant drum beat of insults from her bitter tongue. Moses’ tenuous state is highlighted by the fact that he still lives at home, hides away in his bedroom playing video games, and seems not to have friends or social skills. Indeed, when Pansy unfurls her latest attacks, often recalling the people who annoyed her that day, the pair customarily respond by not responding at all. But Pansy is so profoundly engaged in her rage that she seems not to notice or to mind their lack of connection or interest in her pain.
Then there’s Chantelle (Michele Austin), Pansy’s sister, a successful salon owner and single mother who has raised two bright, playful, beautiful, astute, and kind twenty-something daughters who are making their way in the world. Unlike the men in Pansy’s life, Chantelle does noticeably register and respond to Pansy’s constant barrage of complaints, but she does so by playfully and firmly pushing back against her sister’s meandering rants. In scenes in Chantelle’s salon, we see her easy-going manner and attentive engagement with her clients which reveals that she is worlds apart from Pansy in terms of her social interactions.
As we watch Pansy’s all-consuming and uncontrollable rage and illness (she often complains of feeling unwell and confines herself to bed) it becomes clear there may not be anything wrong with Pansy, physically anyway. Instead, her many “pains” seem to be caused by her deliberate retreat from society and everyone who loves her and her incessant pattern of complaints and criticisms which are literally poisoning her being.
Intriguingly, the movie does not offer an obvious plot point or direction in the narrative. There is no big event, accident, or surprise on the horizon. Instead, much of the plot unfolds as we follow the foul-mouthed Pansy through her daily activities as she is aggravated by, and in turn aggravates, everyone around her. The closest thing that approximates the anchoring event of the movie is when Chantelle invites Pansy to accompany her to visit their deceased mother’s grave on Mother’s Day. For that Chantelle is treated first to excuses about Pansy’s ill health, then a philosophical assault about how her deceased mother will not be served by their visit, then complaints about Pansy’s schedule. When Curtley attempts to ask Pansy about her sister’s invitation, he is similarly berated and silenced. Indeed, the sadness of their family is most apparent in Curtley and Moses, two large black men whose verbal battering have emasculinized them into silent, timid, and woeful beings who shrink and retreat to steer clear of Pansy. Tragically, there is no tenderness, understanding, or visible emotion from them towards Pansy or between the two men. Pansy’s rage has effectively deadened their entire household’s ability to feel and emote without anger.
Arguably the most powerful scene in the film comes when Pansy grudgingly accompanies Chantelle to their mother’s grave. As Chantelle tends to the store-bought flowers, Pansy prattles on about the uselessness of their presence and her mother’s bias towards Chantelle. It is through this slightly more vulnerable posture that Pansy exposes her pain from a childhood interrupted by the care of her younger sister in a fatherless home with a demanding mother. Finally crying and releasing some of her pent-up frustration, Pansy leans into Chanelle who embraces her, admitting “I don’t understand you, but I love you.”
In the final scenes, after an accident on the job, a limping and injured Curtley is brought home by this employee Virgil (Jonathan Livingstone) who deposits him gingerly on the ground floor on a chair at the kitchen table before hesitantly going up stairs to fetch Pansy from her routine, day-time slumber. With no response to his knocking, Virgil cracks the bedroom door to alert Pansy to Curtley injured state. In typical Pansy fashion, he is met with a barrage of accusations and insults. But after the news of Curtley’s injury settles in, Pansy does not rush to see him, assess his injury or tend to him. Instead, she sits awkwardly in their bedroom clutching her blanket. Physically, Curtley can’t go upstairs, but emotionally, Pansy can’t go down. Hard Truths is both funny and devastatingly sad. It illuminates a family in turmoil and exposes the damage of how painful experiences can evolve equally into explosive anger and debilitating silences which trap individuals inside of bitter relationships with themselves and others.