Hard Truths is Mike Leigh’s most severe movie

Mike Leigh’s first feature film, Bleak Moments , appeared almost 50 years ago , in 1971 .

At 81 , at 81 , Leigh has returned for a coda in his classic mode.

Hard Truths, his shortest, most severe movie, is a close-up portrait of a deeply unhappy, intolerably aggressive and contemptuous woman.

Hard Truths’ is in cinemas now.

Leigh Leigh's method of character development leads to a strange over-emphasis, a thoroughgoing-ness that’s quite different from, say, Dickensian caricature, let alone reality.

It minimises story, too. Hard Truths has almost no plot.