Culture Blues

The Instant Movie Club: Trust

Every week, your friends at Culture Blues get together to watch a movie from their Netflix Instant queue. Then, they discuss it over Halloween dinner while totally embarrassing their grandparents with rape stories. This is The Instant Movie Club.

This week we’ll be discussing Trust – David Schwimmer directs Clive Owen and Catherine Keener as parents whose teenage daughter is preyed upon by an online sexual predator.

Next Week: Red State – It’s Halloween! What better time to watch Kevin Smith’s recent horror genre tweak?

SPOILERS BELOW

Jeff Hart: Making a movie about a teenager getting raped by an online sexual predator is obviously a trickier proposition than a weight-loss comedy starring Simon Pegg (Run Fatboy Run, director David Schwimmer’s previous effort). For me, it’s difficult to separate Schwimmer the director from the perpetually flustered Ross of Friends. That’s certainly not fair to Schwimmer who I’m sure has interests that go beyond Jennifer Aniston, paleontology, and premature ejaculation. In fact, Schwimmer is a director at a Santa Monica rape center and has campaigned to ban date-rape drugs (thanks, Wikipedia).

Schwimmer’s passion for the subject makes Trust a surprisingly earnest and restrained film, which does not necessarily make it an entertaining one. Not that films about rape are often entertaining in the conventional popcorn chomping sense. But a difficult film grappling with an ugly subject, which Trust clearly aspires to be, should have an edifying effect on its audience. I didn’t feel that way after watching Trust, particularly after its exploitive “evil is amongst us, and it teaches physics!” coda. Instead, I felt like I’d endured a particularly lengthy after school special.

I don’t think Schwimmer aspired to make a PSA; he set out to make a family drama, but grasping at realism only makes Trust’s more melodramatic flaws more glaring. The internet fear-mongering, Owen’s position at an ad agency doing American Apparel style sexy-teen ads, the garish Red Riding Hood imagery during the rape sequence (and the giant dildo during Owen’s subsequent nightmare) – all these elements are lazy distractions, constructed around To Catch a Predator sensationalism. For Trust to really succeed, it needed to develop its characters. It fails there.

Catherine Keener and Viola Davis are essentially used as mouthpieces for the “correct” way to handle a rape. They get about half the screen time that Owen’s unhinged father does. Schwimmer wisely avoids turning Trust into a revenge fantasy, although he gets plenty of mileage out of teasing the possibility. Schwimmer spends so much time teasing Owen’s descent into violence that to call Trust “anti-revenge” or to praise it for avoiding any Chuck Bronson overtones feels dishonest.

It’s not all failure. Liana Liberato delivers a remarkable performance as the teenage victim. The film is most compelling when she’s on screen, which is less and less as the focus shifts to Owen’s impotent revenge plotting. If one of Schwimmer’s goals with Trust was to express how our society lets down victims of sex crimes, it should consider that point made, largely thanks to Liberato’s effective performance. As to the larger elements Trust points a finger at – the internet, our degenerating culture, etc – Schwimmer is painting with too broad a brush.

Clive Owen's suggested alternate titles for Trust: Children of Men 2, Pedophile Elite, Gropeier

Jeremiah White: I have no trouble separating David Schwimmer the director from his character on Friends. I think it helps, in this case at least, that the projects couldn’t be further removed from each other. Unfortunately, Schwimmer’s personal investment in the subject matter does ultimately reduce a movie capable of complexity to little more than a public service announcement. The coda Jeff mentioned is largely at fault. As if the revelation that Charlie had previously raped other girls wasn’t enough, he gets a Jason Voorhees-esque “he’s still out there” ending. Some characters in Trust are definitely a bit one-note (Owen and Keener primarily), but they’re all human. Except for the sex offender, he’s just a monster. Trust doesn’t have the guts to challenge its audience.

I also highly doubt Schwimmer was aiming for melodrama, but that’s what he ended up with, and I was actually very entertained by it. The missteps are there, and Jeff does a good job of pointing them out, but Trust held my interest throughout. The cast is good even if some of them don’t get much to work with (Owen and Keener again), and the varied tone keeps things from getting monotonous. Owen’s revenge fantasies and the FBI’s internet tracing attempt feel somewhat out-of-place and don’t add much to this story, but on their own they are pretty effective. I almost jumped when Keener’s cell phone rang! If nothing else, Trust could be a decent reel for Schwimmer. I’d be more likely to hire him to direct an action movie or thriller after watching than before.

While Trust is mostly passable, there’s one part that is actually good. Liberato’s performance as Annie is indeed fantastic. She manages a wide range of emotions as Annie constantly evolves in the aftermath of her assault. Despite the complexity of the role, Annie never seems like anything other than an average 14-year old. Her loneliness, despite being surrounded by family, law enforcement, and counselors gives the film an emotional punch that is otherwise lacking. It is, at times, truly heartbreaking to watch.

Trust is admirable in its attempt to tackle this subject matter from a number of perspectives. Part of the message Schwimmer seems desperate to send is that the victim’s feelings afterward take precedence over everything else. So I guess it’s a good thing that’s the one story thread he really got right.