“Hard Truths” is a small independent film that focuses on Pansy, the matriarch of a small family living in London. Pansy is deeply unhappy with the world, and takes it out on everyone around her, including her husband Curtley, son Moses, and sister Chantelle.

“Hard Truths,” a Bleecker Street release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language. Running time: 97 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

The co-stars, who first played sisters in a 1993 Mike Leigh play, explain the iconoclastic director's unique method and how 'Hard Truths' took shape.

The director's latest misanthropic drama, following such films as "Bleak Moments" and "Naked," is a puckeringly sour delight, socked over by Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a woman who suffers no fools, pushing everything around her away, but also confronting deeply-held family issues.

Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), protagonist of Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths,” opening Friday in Houston, is not the first postmenopausal cinematic antiheroine to ask to speak to a manager. But she is — apologies to Frances McDormand’s career — the most fascinating.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste gives an Oscar-caliber performance as a bitter angry woman who strikes out at everyone she encounters in this funny, painfully dramatic slice-of-life from veteran English director Mike Leigh.