Review of Where the Truth Lies (1999) by Shawne ~ — 20 Apr 2006

Written for the screen and directed by Atom Egoyan, [b]Where The Truth Lies[/b], for all its modern trappings of nudity, sex and violence (certainly not something you'd see in a 1950s thriller still straining under the yoke of the Hays Code) is an old-school murder mystery that intentionally harks back to the conventions of classic film noir to reinvent them and test their limits... not too much, of course, but enough to retain a modern, edgy feel on a movie that's as intelligently obtuse and intriguing as many of its predecessors.

Alison Lohman is Karen O'Connor, a young, ambitious journalist who sets out in the 1970s to try and get to the bottom of one of the biggest showbiz mysteries of her time - why song-and-dance duo Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth), who were enormously popular in the 1950s, split up and went their separate ways after the dead body of the blonde, nubile Maureen O'Flaherty (Rachel Blanchard) turns up in the bathtub of their shared hotel suite. She finally convinces the reclusive Vince to work with her on an autobiography, even as Lanny makes the first chapter of his own upcoming biopic available to her through his agent to warn her off working with Vince. As the three lead characters begin their slow, cautious dance around each other, and Karen starts putting together the jagged puzzle pieces that led to Lanny and Vince's break-up, the movie luxuriates in the lust, lies and secrets each character is jealously guarding. When Karen accidentally meets Lanny on a first-class flight, her professional instincts keep her from giving him her real name, but can't protect her from her own childhood adoration of the star. She invariably winds up in Lanny's bed, and the festering, simmering secrets and tensions threaten to blow up in Karen's face, as she finds herself trapped between the two men in a web of blackmail, mystery and possibly, another murder - her own.

Perhaps Egoyan lucked out in using Rupert Holmes' novel as the basis of his screenplay, but I wouldn't know, since I've not read the book. Nevertheless, there's no denying that [b]WTTL[/b] is an intriguing, smart film. Surely a film geek of the highest magnitude, Egoyan clearly aced Film Noir 101, because his movie employs just about every convention there is - a narrator (two, in fact) who knows only half the story, flashback scenes which take on a deeper meaning when secrets and motivations are later revealed, a twist in the tale so that you have to re-evaluate everything you thought you knew about the characters, the sweepingly melodramatic score and of course, red herrings galore. Thankfully, Egoyan knows a thing or two about twisting these conventions in on themselves. (He not only drops in the obligatory gangster who prototypically talks out of the side of his mouth, Sally - played by Maury Chaykin - but merrily points this out!) The suspense is maintained not so much by the twist at the end about the identity of Maureen's murderer (which is actually fairly predictable as twists go), but by the audience's belated discovery how little some of his characters know - oftentimes even less than the audience! - about the dark, dark situation in which they're trapped. The movie also boasts a modern, more realistic sensibility that allows the sexually-charged noir aspect of the film to breathe easier than it would have done in the film noir's 1950s heyday - where sexual perversity was only hinted at in those 1950s movies, [b]WTTL [/b]makes full-fledged use of our more licentious sexual mores to ground some of its characters' psychological motivations.

Egoyan also gives us a twin set of fully-realised male characters - Lanny is the wacky firecracker in the partnership, literally bouncing off the walls and crackling with energy and charisma, while Vince always plays the straight man (*ahem* you'll realise how ironic this is after watching the movie), the calming, solid half of the twosome. Fortunately for the entire enterprise, both Bacon and Firth are totally game for the challenge. Bacon, one of the most consistently under-rated actors of his generation, treads a very fine line in making a decidedly obnoxious character sympathetic. He nails every one of Lanny's sweeping, OTT gestures, but in the downward flick of an eye or an involuntary swallow sketches in an emotional history for Lanny that makes him far more than the shallow, chirpy womaniser we think we see. Firth, too, is impressive - keeping his character remarkably restrained for the most part, it's a shock to see Firth let loose in a couple of key scenes with an explosion of dramatic, violent energy the scale of which you'd never expect from Mr Darcy. Watching him grab a man and beat said man's face to a bloody pulp, and then re-appear onstage with a smear of blood on his cheek and the same unflappable equanimity Vince always sports is a treat in itself. Lohman is a far less fortuitous casting choice; a more beguiling presence in [i]Matchstick Men[/i], her unnaturally young face counts against her here, and she looks too bewildered most of the time to play the femme fatale that comes between Lanny and Vince - yes, even if said femme fatale is just as puzzled as the next character about what's going on. She lacks the sex and gravitas to convince us she belongs on the same screen as Bacon and Firth, both of whom are firing on every cylinder they've got.

The movie, of course, is far from perfect. Smart and slick as it might be, seguing effortlessly from a flashback into the present day, as at home in moments framed in grainy archival footage mode or in the surreal trippiness of a drug-induced blackmail scene, [b]WTTL[/b] is actually [i]less [/i]daring than I would have liked. It dips into predictability a number of times, and crucially, the final twist is far less mysterious and shocking than Egoyan was no doubt going for. (I'm usually a pretty obtuse movie-goer, and I could see it coming a mile away.) As you walk out of the cinema as the credits roll, it's also hard to shake the feeling that the movie went to a great deal of trouble for what isn't, in the final evaluation, a particularly confounding mystery. To Egoyan's credit, you're never bored throughout the movie, and in fact have to work rather hard to put some of the puzzle pieces together. But it's hard not to feel a little cheated when the movie's denouement rings as hollow as it does, considering all the work that went into the deliciously complex set-up. (I personally left trying to figure out if there was [i]more[/i] to it, and realising that, no, in the end, it just wasn't all [i]that[/i] complex.).

There's a fine line to tread between embarrassingly stilted homage and the illuminating reinvention of a genre, and Egoyan does cross that line in the wrong direction more than once. But despite turning out to be far more about style than substance, [b]WTTL[/b] remains a thoroughly engrossing watch, especially when the film focuses on plotting out the messy murder mystery that traps its main characters in a web of deceit, intrigue and good old-fashioned melodrama. And leave us not forget the extent to which the entire enterprise was buoyed by truly committed performances from its two male leads...