Themes: Eccentric Families, Mothers and Daughters, Fathers and Sons
Main Cast: Adrienne Shelly, Martin Donovan, Merritt Nelson, John A. MacKay, Edie Falco
Release Year: 1990
Country: US
Run Time: 107 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
The unlikely relationship between a pregnant high school student and a brooding electronics repairman lies at the center of this droll comedy from writer-director Hal Hartley. Intelligent but unconventional, Maria (Adrienne Shelly) has more to worry about than her pregnancy, as her expectant state drives away her boyfriend and triggers a fatal heart attack in her father. Meanwhile, Matthew (Martin Donovan) has his own problems: an abusive father, a heightened sense of morality that prevents him from taking semi-lucrative television repair jobs, and a suicidal streak that causes him to carry around a potentially deadly grenade. The meeting of these troubled minds at first promises to be beneficial for both, but sours as they are forced to interact with each other's dysfunctional families. As in all of Hartley's pictures, the narrative is filtered through an amusingly detached sensibility that some may consider an acquired taste. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
Review
Hal Hartley's second excursion to absurd suburbia, Trust offers audiences the surreal farce and deadpan wit that Hartley made his calling cards. It also offers a surprisingly touching romance, marked by wry irony and universally resonant concerns, centering on trust as a substitute for love. Trust also works as a calm, unforced, deeply precise meditation on identity, and the ways in which it can be built, destroyed, and re-formed into something new and unanticipated. Clad in purple lipstick and a neon mini-skirt at the film's beginning, Maria (Adrienne Shelly) gradually transforms into a serious, intelligent young woman, with glasses and pulled-back hair. It's a believable transformation, thanks to Shelly's remarkable performance; one of the film's truest moments comes when Maria writes in her diary, "I am ashamed. I am ashamed of being young. I am ashamed of being stupid." Fortunately, in Martin Donovan's Matthew, Maria finds someone who understands this. Donovan makes no apologies for his character's difficult personality, making the misanthropic, emotionally stunted repairman's idiosyncrasies raggedly endearing. He and Shelly navigate the flat Formica landscape of Hartley's dialogue with great ease, their blunt, no-frills performances forming the heart of an ornery but immensely satisfying film. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
Marko Hunt - John Coughlin; Chris Cooke - Diner Guy; Matt Malloy - Ed; Bill Sage - John Bill; Gary Sauer - Anthony; Nena Segal - Aunt Fay; Karen Sillas - Nurse Paine; Patricia Sullivan - Ruark Boss; Tom Thon - Deli Man; Pamela Stewart - Mrs. Blech; Jeff Howard - Robert
Credit
Julie Fabian - Art Director, Claudia Brown - Costume Designer, Sigrid Insull - Costume Designer, Hal Hartley - Director, Nick Gomez - Editor, Phil Reed - Composer (Music Score), Daniel Ouellette - Production Designer, Michael Spiller - Cinematographer, Jerome Brownstein - Producer, Bruce Weiss - Producer, Ted Hope - Producer, Hal Hartley - Screenwriter
Trust concerns the unusual romance/friendship between two young misfits wandering the same Long Island town. When Maria (Shelly), a recent high school dropout, announces her unplanned pregnancy to her family, her father dies of heart failure, her mother immediately evicts her from the household and her boyfriend breaks up with her. Lonely and with nowhere to go, Maria wanders her town in search of a place to stay. Along the way, she meets Matthew (Donovan), a highly educated and extremely moody electronics repairman. Martin was recently fired from his job repairing computers after protesting the mediocrity of his company's products. The two begin an unusual and curiously asexual romance built on their sense of mutual identification and trust. The lovers' families continue to interfere with their fragile and largely conceptual relationship.
