Trust - fidati

I saw this one when I was working in a small movie theater as a student back in 1991 in Leuven, Belgium. I cannot explain why but this little gem of a movie touched me and I fell in love with all the characters (specially the main ones played by Adrienne Shelly and Martin Donovan), the modest soundtrack (loved the synthesizer score at the end), the dialogs, the humor mixed with social and realistic situations. Now, 23 years later, I had the chance to rediscover this movie by accident through a local internet movie site and honestly, after having seen hundreds of movies in all genres during the passed years, it still remains my favorite movie of all times. Thank you, Mr Hartley! One from the heart!

I had the honor of viewing this, one of Hal Hartley's first films, last night. This being 2006, needless to say it has been some time since my first viewing of this very special film. This is the kind of movie that I recommend to certain friends and younger people I know (I first viewed it when very young). So many moments sit in my mind unnoticed until another viewing years after the last. An amazing tale of growth and awakening in a world that often does not present itself as being conducive to growth. The dialog is pure Hartley (if you are unfamiliar with his films I would recommend this as a good place to start). Halfway between John Hughes and Samuel Beckett. The actors portray their awakenings delicately and with precision. Please see this film!

TRUST (1990) *** Adrienne Shelly and Martin Donovan shine as a pregnant, naive teen who is befriended by troubled loner-type, respectively, in this sharply written satire/black comedy/and at times gimmicky bloodless acting (but that's also the warped appeal) that brings into question the monotony of dreary jobs, thankless relationships and bad parenting. Directed by Hal Hartley in his signature solemnity.

I caught this movie on the television network Bravo. I didn't see the very beginning but found myself glued to the machinations of the Matthew Slaughter character. I felt the performance of Martin Donavan was wonderful and I enjoyed the odd way the characters spoke with one another. The lines were rapid-fire, almost like "Moonlighting", but with a different nuance which I can't quite put my finger on. The movie was funny, but the best word for it is "interesting". It truly was a movie unlike any other I had seen, with a Coen Brothers sense of humor. I wish I knew more people who had seen it, because it is a movie that warrants discussion afterward.

I didn't understand it right after the first viewing, but 'Trust' certainly is of Hal Hartley's finest works, excelled only by the somewhat more conventional drama 'Henry Fool'. As with many other of Hartley's earlier works, it takes a while to let the film sink into you. But with the second viewing one starts to appreciate the film's subtilities, both the dry absurd humour and the fine, deeply compassionate portraits of the characters.

The story starts up with a scene typical for Hartley: rebellious teenager Maria Coughlin informs her parents that not only will she drop out of high school, she is also pregnant. A quarrel takes place, and when her father calls her 'slut' she slaps him in the face. He drops down dead. The movie can begin.

Things get ugly for Maria. Her boyfriend, a chauvinist pig, leaves her when she informs him that she's pregnant, claiming he's not the father anyway. And at home her mother waits for her and coolly claims that since Maria's killed her husband, she is now forever in her mother's debt and have to work for her. Never again will she do housework... This is when she meets up with Matthew Slaughter, a truly gifted engineer but with a somewhat sociopathic behaviour, and filled to the brim with anger and hatered.

Martin Donovan truly does an outstanding portrait of Matthew, and perfectly manages to forge his paradoxal feelings of extreme anger and vulnerability into a fully working unit.

A deeply moving story of two scarred, somewhat maladjusted souls manage to find each other, told in a low-key mood that doesn't get to you immediately. But eventually it does, and when it does...you're hooked.

8/10