Three Women

Three new films, each with a great lead performance by a woman

The Siren saw Hard Truths and I’m Still Here at the New York Film Festival. The last one, The Substance, is playing now and still filling theaters. Hard Truths opens Dec. 6 for a one-week qualifying release when it will play in New York Film at Lincoln Center. It will open in theaters nationwide Jan. 10. I’m Still Here will have a one-week awards-qualifying run in November; it releases in New York and Los Angeles on Jan. 17, making it one of the few truly excellent movies ever to open on the Siren’s birthday. It then rolls out to the rest of the U.S. on Feb. 14.

Hard Truths (d. Mike Leigh)

Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) wakes up like the final girl in a slasher movie, flinging herself upright with a shout of horror. It’s so abnormal, and reeks so much of trauma, that the Siren spent the first minutes of Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths feeling sympathy for this woman. Is she afraid because she’s alone? or is it that the noises from the pigeons outside sound a bit like distant gunfire? Pansy gets up and stomps through a home devoid of cushions, bric-a-brac, or pictures of any kind. She scrubs down a perfectly clean leather sofa like it’s a racehorse after the Belmont. And the question follows her: What on earth has made Pansy like this?