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This review was originally published on September 7, 2024 out of the Toronto International Film Festival.
We are recirculating it now thatHard Truthsis in wide theatrical release.
She gets in fights at supermarket check-out lines, first with the cashier, then with the other customers.
Theres an obsessive-compulsive quality to her behavior.
She furiously wipes down her couch in the mornings.
She complains about half-open doors and over-filled kettles.
Her home is immaculate so clean and orderly and blank, it could be an unoccupied hotel room.
She refuses to step into her empty backyard, complaining about squirrel doodoo and rancid bird droppings.
Here, its Pansys relentless negativity that puts her in conflict with the people surrounding her.
Beyond that, its clearly corroded her relationships.
Moses and Curtley almost never say a word back to her.
What good would it do?
He also looks for precise moments those little exchanges and actions where the universe shifts forever.
Hes been doing it this way for 50-plus years, and its produced a magnificent body of work.
(We all probably have someone like Pansy in our lives.)
Mike Leigh makes movies that feel like you could use them to reconstitute humanity if we ever vanished.
