Review of Where the Truth Lies (2005) by Lora T — 10 Oct 2005

[color=white][b][u]WHERE THE TRUTH LIES[/u][/b][/color].

Maybe it's just that I'm Canadian, and that I grew up on a steady diet of Atom Egoyan and Don McKellar and David Cronenberg films. I dunno. It certainly did help me develop a taste for the non-linear, and for the rather strange, in film. Reading all of the negative critical reviews for this film makes me wonder if I'm just biased (conditioned?), but...I saw a better movie than they did. Not a great one, by any means, but a better one than their reviews would let you think.

The story revolves around a 1950s comedy duo, Lanny & Vince (Kevin Bacon & Colin Firth, respectively). A young journalist (Alison Lohman), who happens to have some ties to the duo (sentimental and otherwise), wants to write a book about their lives, careers, and partnership. She also wants to uncover the truth about a nasty little "accident" that happened back in the duo's heyday: a young woman found dead in their hotel suite's bathtub.

Now, I do agree that the narrative is choppy...but I don't think the storytelling would've worked any other way. To tell it from beginning to end without flashbacks and "Rashomon"-like perspectives would have made it...mundane. And that's not a word you could use to describe this film.

The performances by the three leads are, truly, excellent. Colin Firth, so accustomed to playing the aloof, proper, English gentleman really gets to stretch his legs in this one - he starts out typically, but when we get to see his backstage persona, he's [i]not [/i]the Colin we ladies all swoon over. Alison Lohman seems to be playing several roles all at once here, and she carries them off nicely. And Kevin Bacon? He ends up being the most interesting of them all, because from one scene to the next we're never quite sure which of his versions of Lenny are the truth.

It's not a grade-A, run-to-the-theatre-[i]NOW[/i] film. That much is true. And some of its execution could have been helped along by different editing. But overall, the story that was told was a good one, and I thought it was told in an interesting fashion. There are enough little twists, too, to keep it interesting [i]almost [/i]the whole way through (it did drag a bit at the end, but not painfully so). It's worth seeing, if only to see the three leads do a phenomenal job under Egoyan's direction.

But as I said, maybe I'm just conditioned this way.