Too much already.By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
Trust is a laundry checklist of everything that could happen after an underage teen is raped by a man 20 years older. If you infer an ironic tone, you'd be right because presenting all the possible reactions and actions to a rape is not always dramatically the best action. Too much already.
Director David Schwimmer of Friends fame does a credible job establishing an authenticity about the rape but less so when showing the family before the act as so happy as to be almost nauseatingly unreal. Fortunately Schwimmer has Clive Owen as the father, Will Cameron, and Catherine Keener as mother, Lynn Cameron. These veterans could make ice feel warm, and Owen as the troubled father anchors the film in credulity.
What saves this film from clich? hell is the dogged adherence to authenticity about the circumstances of the violation, from the universal ambivalence of the teen, Annie (Liana Liberato), with her neuroses about her looks and her desire to be favored by the in-crowd to her cluelessness about how ordinary people cope with anonymous predators.
But the real dramatic action comes with Owens' spot-on take of father Will Cameron, whose ad-exec life has had him in control of his life and his family. Not so after the rape, which leaves him vulnerable to anger with his daughter and revenge on the rapist.
It's Will who makes us think about our own reactions to such a tragedy, torn as we might be between justice and vigilantism.
John DeSando co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com