A Place Called Truth

This is a truly awful movie. A mysterious young woman stalks a wealthy ranch family. I won't give the plot away, although I kid you not, it is so cliched that I figured out the plot and climax during the opening credits. The only thing to recommend it is the very credible performance of Sara St. James as the young woman. The directing, script, and photography are uniformly bad and for some bizarre reason all the actors affect heavy (and very bad)southern accents although the movie is set in the desert southwestern United States.

This movie is bloody awful. There's a lesbian sex scene within the first 10 minutes (gurreat...), the acting's atrocious, all of the characters are boring and it's hard to like any of them; however "cowboy Kyle" is quite good-looking. This film has so many parallels with Zalman King's far superior Two Moon Junction: mysterious drifter with a dog captures heart of "Southern" princess who's already betrothed to someone else, lesbians, alcohol abuse, girls kissing, sex scenes (King is obviously a fan of "girl on top"), secrets within a proud, rich family and a couple of weirdos thrown in for good measure (in this case the "sheriff" and the two lesbians who are all really quite creepy). There's also a completely irrelevant section where the main character and her friend go to New Orleans and meet some washed up ex-footballer. Just an excuse for more sex scenes. Don't waste your time with this trash. I found this movie in the "Thriller" section. Yeah right, the only "thrilling" part of this movie was when the credits rolled. B-A-D in every way.

This is the first erotic thriller I have ever seen and it will be the last. I believe films work for audiences when two things are done. The film pulls off its premise with conviction. Or the film is a genre movie and gives the Audiences what they want. And I think that is the main problem with "A place called Truth" It is written like a bad noir and photographed like a serious drama movie. But at its heart it is silly soft core porn. This makes the film seem like an R rated version of "days of our lives" and that goes for the acting as well. Plot and Character motive are ignored early on in the film, but are then relied upon for the final act to have its weight.

The final ingredient a film like this needs is a sense of daring about its subjects e.g how far will they go, how perverse are the situations. This film doesnt have that.