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Trust
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Hal
Hartley is an American independent filmmaker who, like Jim Jarmusch, has found
a way of making little films for a particular niche in the mainstream market.
Defiantly low-budget, his films make a virtue of their limitations. Trust is another of his glimpses into
the lives of desperate, ordinary people trying to survive in the wasteland of
Middle America.
Trust has much in common with Hartley's
previous bargain-basement hit, The
Unbelievable Truth (1989). Adrienne Shelly again
plays a moody, discontented teenager, Maria, trapped by the ritualistic
narrow-mindedness of her suburban family. As in the earlier film, the knight
who lands in her life, Matthew (here incarnated by Martin Donovan), is a shady,
taciturn character – part violent criminal, part existentialist philosopher.
Their
slowly burgeoning relationship – a tentative, asexual liaison for our
AIDS-obsessed era – is familiar Hartley territory. New in Trust is the emphasis on family life, with all its binds, tensions
and occasional solaces. Typical in the film's portrait gallery is Maria's
mother (Merritt Nelson), a hard-bitten, heavy-drinking widow who
matter-of-factly tries to divert Matthew's attentions onto her other daughter
with the advice: "she's a better lay".
With
the family comes family drama – meaning melodrama, or outright soap opera. Some
of the funniest and sharpest moments of the film are those that quietly go
right over the top. Maria's father, berating her in the kitchen, suddenly falls
down dead. Matthew's father greets the sight of a cigarette idly left atop an
otherwise spotless sink with a rage worthy of Greek tragedy.
Hartley's
filmic style is effortlessly funky. Angled sharply against bare white walls,
characters rap with each other in staccato, question-and-answer couplets.
Scenes begin and end abruptly. The background New Wave music sometimes wells up, drowning out everything else. Matthew announces that
"TV is the opium of the masses", then walks past a dozen wild-eyed
suburbanites lined up at a TV repair shop, pathetically cradling their busted
sets.
What
is most captivating about Trust is
its fine grasp on the strange moral ethos of our times. Hartley's heroes are
nobody's fools; cynical and world-weary, they do
whatever they must to get by in a harsh, inhospitable world. Yet, amid the
necessary compromise and inevitable disappointment, a tiny flame still flickers
in the hearts of a few, special individuals.
For
all its trendy, flip sarcasm, the film is ultimately a romance. Love offers Matthew
and Maria a brief, fragile glimmer of hope in this bleak landscape of part-time
work and familial discontent. Theirs is an impossible, doomed relationship, but
by the end Hartley has his audience praying that Love will Conquer All.
Trust is a rare sort of film: a
tough-minded soapie, a kitchen-sink
MORE Hartley: Amateur, Flirt, Henry Fool, Simple Men © Adrian Martin November 1991 |
