Trust (1990)

What makes it different from others?

Waste of time

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Maria Coughlin (Adrienne Shelly) announces to her parents her plans to quit high school, pregnancy, and intention to marry her boyfriend Anthony. Her boyfriend refuses and her father drops dead soon from the shock. Her mother kicks her out of the house. She meets Matthew Slaughter (Martin Donovan) who takes her in. He's an electronics repairman who hates TV's cultural influence. He quits his job and fights with his father. He steals a hand grenade from his veteran father. Maria and Matthew start a relationship based on respect, admiration, and trust = love.Hal Hartley's mannered dialogue is similar to Wes Anderson but it doesn't have his later polish. This doesn't have quite the comedic tone needed. What it has is the magnetic Adrienne Shelly. She keeps this movie alive when it starts to sputter with its insistent style. There also has Edie Falco as the older sister. Hal Hartley definitely has a style and seems intent on using it no matter what.

20+ years after I first saw it, this remains one of my favorite films of all time. Hal Hartley's second feature is built around the same deliciously weird sense of humor as his debut "The Unbelievable Truth" -- even if the balance here tilts a bit more toward (melo)drama than comedy. Hartley has been known to explain that he felt almost as though he put Adrienne Shelly's character on a pedestal in that first film, and wanted to explore the darker implications of that.Shelly herself (RIP) is even better this time around, and in place of Robert Burke, we now get Martin Donovan as one of the more intense, flawed, and ultimately lovable romantic leads you'll ever see on film. (I almost put quotes around "romantic," because this is not really a love story in the traditional "does the guy get the girl" sense. It's more interesting than that.) Donovan would go on to appear in five additional Hartley films, even playing Jesus Christ in the terrific featurette "The Book of Life," but none of those roles is more iconic than this one.Between the characters and the dialogue, Hartley and his cast created something here that is wonderfully unique, humorous, and poignant. Think _Sex, Lies and Videotape_, sort of: while the writer-directors have different voices, there's that same sense of careful economy, and of wondering whether these two messed-up people are ever going to get their acts together -- and cheering them on either way.

From the first sequence of Hal Hartley's Trust a viewer knows he's in for a dark, obscure ride. It opens with the shot of a young teen named Maria (Adrienne Shelly), smoking while being scolded by her parents on what a punk deviant she is after being kicked out of school. She informs them that she is pregnant and the consumption of shock and shame leads to her father's on-spot heart attack and death. This should give you an inkling on what kind of film you're in for.Maria winds up running away from home to inform her jock-boyfriend she is pregnant. He, of course, couldn't care less, as he wants to focus on sports with little distraction. Now, Maria is alone until she meets Matthew (Martin Donovan), a man whose life keeps intercepting the focus of the film up until this point. Matthew lives with his abusive father, who looks on to his son with a condescending eye. He regards him as an irrelevant failure with no ability to hold down a job. This puts Matthew in a suicidal position, barely holding on as a whole. When both of them meet, we truly see that misery loves company.The relationship Maria and Matthew have in the film is talky and quiet, with Matthew bringing detached realism into the life of Maria's, which is already dominated by teenage naivety. Hartley paints both characters as flawed people that do not magically become repaired by each other, but find a more stable sense of life and trust in their opposites. Shelley captures the reckless spirit of Maria well, and Donovan is superb at giving his sadsack character Matthew a face and a soul. Their chemistry is the driving force behind Trust's success.There's a constant use of bright, vibrant color in the film that really amplifies the overall look and tone of the picture. In the opening shot is where this can be viewed as being most prominent. As stated, Shelley remains in close-up and the colors of her makeup and lip gloss remain eye-popping and totally "in your face." The remainder of the movie can occasionally turn up as grim, with a gray palette, but often does Hartley gather up the brightest, most visually attractive colors to see on-screen.But where Trust really excels is in its dialog. Smooth, fluent, and often subversively philosophical in terms of direct contact, he establishes a relationship between two unlikely characters that we can see grow and build as time goes on. They expand from the one-dimensional caricatures we initially view them as to complete humans we can recognize and sympathize with.Trust is the second film from Hal Hartley, who has made a career out of making comedy-dramas with an emphasis on character and monologues. He establishes himself quaintly here, assuring his independent status, and carefully makes use of such neglected things as mood and tone to set a nice standard in this drama. It's the kind of feeling that I see many going for. We walk in unsure, but emerge with the mindset that we've seen a new filmmaking talent in the works. God, do I love that feeling.Starring: Adrienne Shelly and Martin Donovan. Directed by: Hal Hartley.

I first saw this film in 1990 while I was in college and I loved it. I watched it over and over on VHS. I told everyone that this was my favorite movie of all time and watched every Hal Hartley movie I could find. Last night I stumbled across Trust on Netflix Instant and I thought I'd check it out to see if this film that I was so passionate about when I was 20 years old held up over time or if the 40 year old me would find it silly or dated. To my surprise I was blown away all over again by how ridiculously great it is. The smart stylized dialog, the music, the starkness, the silences, the camera framing, all of the whacked out but fully human characters, Martin Donovan and Adrienne Shelly so young and beautiful. As the final, simple, beautiful, frame of the film disappeared and credits rolled I was left sitting on the couch in a state of shocked amazement at the effect this film still has on me. Hands down my favorite movie of all time!