Two dramas are opening at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln's Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center on Jan. 17. One film centers on a family's lasting love through hardship, and another on two friends reuniting after years apart.
Mike Leigh returns to the contemporary world with a fierce, compassionate, and often darkly humorous study of family and the thorny ties that bind us with "Hard Truths." Reunited with Leigh for the first time since multiple Oscar-nominated "Secrets and Lies," the astonishing Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a woman wracked by fear, tormented by afflictions, and prone to raging tirades against her husband, son, and anyone who looks her way. Meanwhile, her easygoing younger sister, played by Michele Austin ("Another Year"), is a single mother with a life as different from Pansy’s as their clashing temperaments — brimming with communal warmth from her salon clients and daughters alike. This expansive film from a master dramatist takes us into the intensities of kinship, duty, and the most enduring of human mysteries: that even through lifetimes of hurt and hardship, we still find ways to love those we call family.
"Hard Truths" is rated R and is showing through Jan. 30.
In "The Room Next Door," Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton) were close friends in their youth, when they worked together at the same magazine. Ingrid went on to become a novelist while Martha became a war reporter, and they were separated by the circumstances of life. After years of being out of touch, they meet again in an extreme but strangely sweet situation.
"The Room Next Door" is rated PG-13 and is showing through Jan. 30.
For more information on films, including showtimes and ticket availability, visit the Ross website.
