Hard Truths

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Hard Truths

In Theaters Fri Jan 10

1h 37m

Comedy

Drama

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96%

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75 Reviews

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Legendary filmmaker Mike Leigh returns to the contemporary world with a fierce, compassionate, and often darkly humorous study of family and the thorny ties that bind us. Reunited with Leigh for the first time since multiple Oscar-nominated Secrets and Lies, the astonishing Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a woman wracked by fear, tormented by afflictions, and prone to raging tirades against her husband, son, and anyone who looks her way. Meanwhile, her easygoing younger sister, played by Michele Austin (Another Year), is a single mother with a life as different from Pansy's as their clashing temperaments -- brimming with communal warmth from her salon clients and daughters alike. This expansive film from a master dramatist takes us into the intensities of kinship, duty, and the most enduring of human mysteries: that even through lifetimes of hurt and hardship, we still find ways to love those we call family.

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In Theaters Fri Jan 10

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Critics Consensus

Marianne Jean-Baptiste puts on a prickly masterclass in Hard Truths, another superb character study from writer-director Mike Leigh.

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Mike Leigh

Director

Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Actor

Michele Austin

Actor

David Webber

Actor

Tuwaine Barrett

Actor

Ani Nelson

Actor

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Dana Stevens

Slate

Just 97 minutes long, Hard Truths is a deceptively slight movie that can barely contain its titanic central performance.

Dec 20, 2024

Full Review

Peter Rainer

Christian Science Monitor

The performance of Jean-Baptiste transcends the clinical. She shows us what lies beneath Pansy’s suffering. This woman who can’t abide other people is terrified of being alone.

Rated: 4.5/5

Dec 20, 2024

Full Review

Manohla Dargis

New York Times

Leigh creates a world that, like the vast, mysterious one hovering outside its frame, can seem agonizingly empty if you can’t see the people in it.

Dec 9, 2024

Full Review

Rachel Wagner

Rachel's Reviews (YouTube)

Marianne Jean-Baptiste is absolutely great in this movie. Has one of the best crying scenes I've ever seen in a movie

Dec 20, 2024

Full Review

Frank J. Avella

The Contending

The film is a towering tour de force for Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who tears through it like a feral, rabid animal. Her Pansy is difficult to take, to say the least, but the payoff, late in the film, is emotionally devastating...

Rated: A-

Dec 19, 2024

Full Review

Andrew Wyatt

The Take-Up

Leigh has an unassailable talent for rendering characters who are a lot, as they say, and Pansy -- an utterly ferocious and enervating Marianne Jean-Baptiste -- might be the most “a lot” person in the entire Leigh-verse.

Dec 16, 2024

Full Review

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Hard Truths: Trailer 1

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Synopsis

Legendary filmmaker Mike Leigh returns to the contemporary world with a fierce, compassionate, and often darkly humorous study of family and the thorny ties that bind us. Reunited with Leigh for the first time since multiple Oscar-nominated Secrets and Lies, the astonishing Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a woman wracked by fear, tormented by afflictions, and prone to raging tirades against her husband, son, and anyone who looks her way. Meanwhile, her easygoing younger sister, played by Michele Austin (Another Year), is a single mother with a life as different from Pansy's as their clashing temperaments -- brimming with communal warmth from her salon clients and daughters alike. This expansive film from a master dramatist takes us into the intensities of kinship, duty, and the most enduring of human mysteries: that even through lifetimes of hurt and hardship, we still find ways to love those we call family.

Director: Mike Leigh
Producer: Georgina Lowe
Screenwriter: Mike Leigh, Mike Leigh
Distributor: Bleecker Street
Production Co: Thin Man Films, The Mediapro Studio, Film4
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Jan 10, 2025, Limited
Runtime: 1h 37m