Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award
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Trust1990
The second feature film from writer/director Hal Hartley is TRUST. It concerns the unusual romance between two young misfits wandering the same suburban town. When Maria, a recent high school dropout, announces her unplanned pregnancy to her family, her father dies of a heart attack, her mother immediately throws her out of the house and her boyfriend breaks up with her. She meets Matthew, a highly educated and extremely moody electronic repairman living with his domineering and abusive father. The great cast includes Edie Falco as Maria's older sister.
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What makes this film worth watching?
"Just as the snappy comebacks of Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart mixed the jaded with the sincere, Hartley showed me that dialogue could be funny, dark, and smart while also being heartfelt." - Stacey Swann, New England Review
1 member likes this review
This is Hal Hartley's best film. The writing and actings styles are more mannered than realistic, yet in this film that approach works. The actors are great, particularly Matin Donovan and Adrienne Shelley. Maybe the reason the stiff acting style works so well is that so many characters in the film have lost the ability to trust, so their stiffness indicates their distance from the sincerity and/or intimacy that allows human beings to thrive. Some of Hartley's other early films are interesting but pretentious or too self-consciously "artistic". Trust reworks the template of the romantic comedy to deliver a film that is smart, dark, funny, and touching, but which is entirely its own film. I first saw it in 1990. I have seen it several times since, and it still moves and entertains me.
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Starring
- Suzanne Costollos - Rachel
- Martin Donovan - Matthew Slaughter
- Edie Falco - Peg Coughlin
- Jeff Howard - Robert
- John MacKay - Jim Slaughter
- Matt Malloy - Ed
- Merritt Nelson - Jean Coughlin
- Gary Sauer - Anthony
- Adrienne Shelly - Maria Coughlin
- Karen Sillas - Nurse Paine
- Tom Thon - Deli Man
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Member Reviews (1)
This is Hal Hartley's best film. The writing and actings styles are more mannered than realistic, yet in this film that approach works. The actors are great, particularly Matin Donovan and Adrienne Shelley. Maybe the reason the stiff acting style works so well is that so many characters in the film have lost the ability to trust, so their stiffness indicates their distance from the sincerity and/or intimacy that allows human beings to thrive. Some of Hartley's other early films are interesting but pretentious or too self-consciously "artistic". Trust reworks the template of the romantic comedy to deliver a film that is smart, dark, funny, and touching, but which is entirely its own film. I first saw it in 1990. I have seen it several times since, and it still moves and entertains me.
1 member likes this review