Verdacht auf Liebe

Clever Indy film-making at it's best!!! This film jump started a genre. Hal Hartley's masterpiece brims with clever dialogue and funny performances. Adrianne Shelley is a standout as Audrey who is convinced that the world is soon to blow up. Chris Cooke should be getting a lot more work after his winning performance as Vic Hugo. He's a delight to watch as his daughter Audrey bargains with him on about going to college. And Robert Burke is great as the quiet Josh, the returning man with a past. You catch something new every time with this film ... like the funny way everyone fights in the movie (elaborate pushing matches). An original film and thoroughly enjoyable. Great soundtrack too ... under Hal Hartley's alias of Ned Rifle. Highly recommended ... and definitely more than worth than 50¢ at your video rental and won't put you to sleep if you like original, clever, landmark Indy films like this one is.

Audry (Adrienne Shelly) is a brainy and beautiful girl living in Long Island. She has just been accepted to Harvard, no less, but has to bargain with her father about attending the famous school. She is just turning 18 and wants to major in literature. Father insists on her getting a part time job and choosing to study communications. At this moment on LI, also, a convicted man has just returned to his home turf. His name is Josh and no one is sure what he did, but it seems that he killed two or more people. Audry has a chance meeting with him and is smitten. She even gets him a job at her father's automobile shop. How in the world is this a match made in heaven? No description is really adequate to relate the events in this film. Rather than plot driven, it is a quirky, intelligent film where conversation and the unexpected reign mightily. The script is just stunning. Where else, I might suggest, can you view a film that offers explanations on the merits of Moliere's Misanthrope and the workings of a car's transmission apparatus? All of the actors, the costumes, the look, and the direction of the film are very, very worthy, too. (Sadly, Ms. Shelly was murdered in 2006 in NYC). There is a smattering of bad language and the subject matter is adult, so the movie is not suitable for an underage audience. Nevertheless, if you definitely want to take a walk down the aisle of vintage, independent films, pick this one up without delay. It is a gem, even years after its creation.

This is a great movie! When I went to see it in 1990, I had no idea what it was about. I had a pass for a free screening. What luck that was--I have not been the same since. I love deadpan comedies, and this one is the best I've seen--it paved the way for Welcome to the Dollhouse and Bottle Rocket in 1996, and director Hal Hartley has become a well-known figure in the art house scene (too bad he has never been able to duplicate the success of his first movie). Robert John Burke plays the ex con mechanic, mistaken as a man of the cloth by several characters. Adrienne Shelley (where is she now?) plays the depressed teenager who falls in love with him, despite his mysterious past (did he really kill her best friend's sister?) Shelley appeared in Hartley's second film, Trust, and then made a low budget teen comedy (can't think of the title). Burke went on to replace Peter Weller as RoboCop and star in "Thinner." What a waste of two great talents! This movie has it all--romance, comedy, a quirky soundtrack, George Washington obsession, fun with crescent wrenches, and just a bit of drama. "Listen......bombs." See it!

New York kooky indie-moviemaker Hal Hartley's feature debut, THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH tantalizes a somewhat morbid idea that can a reformed manslaughter-convicted ex-con gets a second chance in his hometown where the crime was perpetrated? Freshly out of prison, Josh (Burke) returns to Long Island where his felony has been disproportionately mythologized, he impresses auto-repair shop owner Vic Hugo (Cooke, enjoy some unorthodox outpourings that are rarely seen in a materialistic father) with his autodidactic mechanic skill, therefore he is hired.

Meanwhile, Vic's teenage daughter Audry (Shelly, in her film debut), saturated in her own teen angst, becomes world-weary with nuclear-induced eschatology, she dumps her obsessive boyfriend Emmet (Sauer) and in turn, takes a shine to the reticent Josh, only the latter chooses to suppress his reciprocal feelings and cautiously declines her advancement, clearly learning from his past misdeeds, Josh's celibate stoicism and dark get-up frequently prompts a question from strangers "are you a priest?".

A rebellious and disgruntled Audry procrastinates her college education and takes a bash at modeling, and soon becomes the talk of the small community as she starts to bare all in the magazine spreads. So what does it take to bring the two drifting-apart lovebirds together? The titular "truth" becomes an operative ice-breaker when the manslaughter myth comes clean in a belated confession of the sole witness.

Basking in a loopy, small-town monotony under a simmering temperature that characteristically flags up Audry and Josh's peculiarity, Hartley's meet-cute anachronistically finds a kindred spirit in Todd Solondz's faux-naïf comedies, and juxtaposing Adrienne Shelley's impish wackiness with Robert John Burke's four-square stolidness, chemistry has been incredibly cooked up, to validate that underneath their respective volatile and impassive surfaces, indeed, it is just two tender hearts hankering for a connection to retain some self-worth in a nihilistic fable.

Rounding up a coterie of game players (a puckish Edie Falco included) and shot with pristine efficiency and a low-key kuso-inflected smugness, at the end of the day, THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH briskly augurs Hartley's cottage-industry, outlier-hinged hallmark that is brimful of pleasurable absurdity and sensible geniality.

Mind you, it's a wafer thin storyline. A heart-warming little story of an ex-convict returning to a city, and the infatuation of the local Lolita has for him, it touches you, ever so softly, from behind the facade of the boisterous small town existence and the foibles of the small group of townspeople who form the nucleus of the story. At the end of it, you're glad you sat down to watch it - it's a laid-back mind-soother, which leaves you with a warm feeling all over.

What elevates the film by several rungs is, however, the superb performance of Robert Burke as the mercurial, unpredictable and enigmatic Joshua Hutton, who leaves you ambivalent about his real intentions till the very end, when all is revealed. Supporting him, ably, is the petite Adrienne Shelly, who may not be strictly pretty, but has an elfin charm - not really a little girl any more, but not yet a woman. They complement each other perfectly, and it is this chemistry that makes the film glow, and forms the perfect foil to the humdrum backdrop of everything else that is going on.

It's rewarding, and relaxing, viewing - a perfect de-stresser, if there ever was one. If you can get hold of a copy, hold on, tight.