Hard Truths review: Fantastic film saddled with terrible name

There’s a 30 Rock joke – as there always is – about its fictional comedian Tracy Jordan and the movie that won him an Oscar, Hard to Watch.

The fake movie’s full moniker is Hard to Watch: Based on the book Stone Cold Bummer by Manipulate, about a former high school football star who fell on difficult times and now the only thing he uses the football for “is as a toilet”.

The gag, first referenced in a 2010 episode, is riffing off the 2009 film, Precious: Based on the novel by Push by Sapphire, about a 16-year-old girl’s interminably tough life.

William Shakespeare’s “What’s in a name” quote may have argued that what you call something does not change the fundamental nature of what it is, but surely your experience of it does. Would you think a rose smelled as sweet if it was named “Putricia” like the corpse flower, or would it colour and frame your expectations?

In 30 Rock, the joke was that a movie named Hard to Watch was awards-bait, telegraphing its worthiness and virtue but the reality works differently. Or at least it does now.

British filmmaker Mike Leigh’s latest film, Hard Truths, should’ve been a strong contender at the Oscars for Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s wrenching performance.

It is one of, if not the, the boldest, spikiest and technically brilliant turns you’ll see these past 12 months. It should be the talk of the global town, but she was largely ignored on the awards circuit except by the critics groups (who generally watch everything) and the BAFTAs (where it had a home-field advantage).

You can’t help but wonder if the name Hard Truths was a turn-off to all those voters, who, maybe at the end of the day, went home and when choosing which Oscar contenders to watch, decided they didn’t want truths, especially hard ones. It’s a name that sounds like homework.

If you can get over the title, this is a gem of a film. It’s a character-driven drama that jolts you awake to how pain can manifest in people, and why even the most annoying ones are deserving of compassion.

Pansy (Jean-Baptiste) is what most people would call “hard work”. Aggressive and combative, she’s the person you avoid everywhere – at work, at the shops, in family gatherings and even on the road.

She’ll pick a fight over a parking spot, at the supermarket check-out and with every person she comes across. Every hill is one to die on. She’s an equal opportunity sprayer and no one is spared the venom, not her adult son, who she verbally abuses as a useless layabout and not the furniture shop saleswoman.

Based on that, Pansy is a horror. How could someone whose relentless negative sucks the joy out of every room possibly be worthy of empathy?

That’s the crux in Hard Truths, because Leigh and Jean-Baptiste, who previously worked together on the social realist filmmaker’s 1996 movie Secrets and Lies, have created a fully dimensional character.

She has a context – old family resentments, anxiety and depression – but it’s not presented as trauma porn to gawp over or “explain everything”. It’s shading and it allows audiences to begin to understand.

The character is contrasted with her sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin), who is Pansy’s opposite. Chantelle is warm and friendly, and has a close bond with her adult daughters, who are like their mother.

If someone like Chantelle can make time and extend her compassion to Pansy, shared DNA or not, then that forces the audience to ask why they might’ve been ready to write Pansy off.

The challenge laid out by Hard Truths is not whether you can spend 90 minutes in the company of someone so “unpleasant” but whether you have it in you to open yourself to her.

The Hard Truths then is not about Pansy or the emotional destruction she wreaks, but about ourselves.

Still, for marketability, it could’ve used a different name. Maybe then more people would’ve watched it.

Rating: 4/5

Hard Truths is in cinemas