Alan in Belfast: Hard Truths – an explosive performance from Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Mike Leigh’s new film (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 31 January)

Pansy lives in a constant state of agitation. No one and no thing pleases her. The pigeons in the garden threaten to invade her over-cleaned abode. Her immediate family are a burden. Her sister doesn’t appreciate her. And shop assistants get the (wonderfully) sharp edge of her angry tongue for just existing never mind slighting her. Pansy is also in a constant state of fatigue, coping less and less well with her life.

The dialogue in Mike Leigh’s new film Hard Truths is very theatrical, at first feeling somewhat overwritten and longwinded for on-screen delivery. But a growing appreciation of Pansy’s condition makes her lengthy interventions more natural.

“Why are you so angry?” … “Why can’t you enjoy life?”

Marianne Jean-Baptiste delivers an explosive performance playing Pansy with a constant frown. Curtley (David Webber) is her long-suffering and almost-silent husband who escapes to work as a plumber. Meanwhile her son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) can either be found playing video games in bed or aimlessly wandering the streets of London.

Director and screenwriter Leigh contrasts the darkness of Pansy’s household with the joy and laughter of her sister’s. Bubbly Chantelle (Michele Austin) runs a hair salon and is single mum to two vivacious daughters Aleisha (Sophia Brown) and Kayla (Ani Nelson). Life doesn’t run smoothly for these three, but they move through life with much lighter spirits.

“I’m not well, Curtley. I’m a sick woman” Pansy exclaims in desperation. Health practitioners fear her appearance, though one locum GP (“a mouse with glasses” played in a brief scene rather pleasingly by Ruby Bentall) has the measure of her exasperating patient. But no one has yet been able to get close enough to diagnose the clinical depression that is clear for the film’s audience to see.

If there’s a weakness with the tableau that Leigh has constructed, it’s that savvy sister Chantelle’s job should make her adept at judging people, but takes so long to pick up on the root of Pansy’s unhappiness. Though Chantelle’s underlying compassion, persistence and patience with her overbearing sister are triumphs of the film’s character development process.

While latter scenes contain moments that could melt your heart – the care of Chantelle’s daughters towards cousin Moses, along with his reaction to an unheard stranger’s conversation – the film is allowed to end with Pansy’s elephant no longer hiding under the carpet yet still not properly addressed. There’s hope, but no firm resolution.

Hard Truths is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 31 January.