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.

Leigh never lets his audience escape the underlying humiliation and helplessness Pansy feels, and Pansy never allows herself that grace either. In that respect, calling the film “Hard Truths” almost implies a well-earned victory lap for a filmmaker who has dedicated his work to elucidating the complexities of the human condition,

Baptiste, her 30-years-later reunion with the legendary filmmaker Mike Leigh as the star of “Hard Truths,” in theaters now, has been a remarkable triumph.

E arly in the new Mike Leigh film Hard Truths, actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste delivers a ferocious monologue about the uselessness of the Royal Society for the Protection of Anima