feeling listless

Film Watching Hal Hartley’s Trust just now has reminded me of just how the independent film ‘industry’ was in the early nineties before the big studios began to control production. Hartley’s is a singular voice; like the great auteurs his films with their understated acting, lyrical dialogue and deserted suburbia paradoxically offer a more realistic evocation of the human condition than the costume dramas and self-consciously post-modern movies that clogged up the release schedule that saw that decade out.

Here, we find a meeting of misfits; twentysomething Martin Donovan lives with an abusive father and sometimes repair televisions, teenage Adreinne Shelley causes hers to have a heart attack when she reveals her pregnancy. As the film progresses he learns the simple life from her and she realises that there’s more to life than fashion and boys and as the title suggests they learn to Trust one another. It’s the incidental details of their personalities – he carries a grenade ‘just in case’ and she is trying to find a baby snatcher – which provide the most pleasure.

It’s also just refreshing to see a film with such a spare style, with long takes at allow the actors room to do their job without the camera restlessly rolling hither and thither, or an editor with an itchy splicing finger. Much of the film happens in two shots and though this is probably a function of the budget, they’re never less than interesting and much of that has to do with being in the company of these players, Donovan and Shelley in particular. The latter is simply amazing, perfectly capturing the girl’s developing maturity, a process completed in a final heartrending shot.