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Film Review: Trust

Trust is a movie which should be renamed 'dread' says Olly Mann

By Olly Mann

9 Jul 2011, 17:39

‘Dread’ would be a more apt title for this drama, as that’s what I felt for almost its entire duration. Dread that Annie, a naïve and inexperienced fourteen year-old (Liana Liberato) would be lured into meeting ‘Charlie’, the much older man with whom she has been conducting increasingly sexualised online conversations. Dread that, if they do eventually meet, he will rape her. Dread that her well-meaning but unobservant English father (Clive Owen), will seek violent vengeance.
 
Each inappropriate message Charlie sends Annie is flashed up on the bottom of the screen in ‘real time’ whilst the action unfolds – a neat trick that director David Schwimmer (yes, THAT David Schwimmer) may or may not have nicked from the BBC’s Sherlock. “Forget the age thing”, Charlie urges his victim, manipulatively. “We’re soulmates. I thought you were old enough to understand that?”. How horrible. You want to shout at the screen: stop talking to him! Throw away your iPhone! (Incidentally, Apple products feature prominently throughout. There’s even a clunking reference to “the new MacBook Pro”. Is this the weirdest product placement ever? ‘Grooming children: there’s an App for that’?)
 
Despite its best intentions, Trust comes across as Daily Mail drama – FEAR FOR YOUR CHILDREN. It’s predictable: the things we fear may happen ultimately do, and in precisely the way we anticipate. And then there are the clumsy attempts at broadening out the domestic drama into social commentary (Annie’s Dad works in advertising, promoting seductive photographs of Lolita-like girls in their pants. Look, society! Look what you’ve done!)  That said, Andy Bellin and Robert Festinger’s script does provide a few thoughtful moments in which tabloid paedo-hysteria is challenged: Annie believes she is in love with her abuser, whilst her father is rather too busy soaking up the hatred on vigilante websites to console his daughter when she needs him most.
 
At its best, the stellar performances (notably Catherine Keener, completely credible as Annie’s anguished mom) raise the standard of the film above its TV-movie set-up. At its worst, it could even be seen as a Paedophile's Handbook, with top tips for the wannabe sex-pest: gain her trust, send a fake photo, flatter her ego, tell her you love her. It’s also completely devoid of any humour, which I fear is Schwimmer trying to prove a point. Not dreadful, then, by any means; but rather too full of dread.

Light and shade next time, please, Mr Schwimmer.

Trust opened in cinemas this weekend.