Just when you thought that Northwestern alum David Schwimmer couldn’t be serious, he proves us all wrong — Ross Geller-style — with his second foray into directing: the stunningly real drama Trust.
Actress Liana Liberato plays 14-year-old Annie Cameron, who falls for a boy she meets online. At first, he tells her that he’s 16, then he amends it to 20, and finally settles on 25. Each time, Annie is hurt that he lied, but agrees to forgive him. This creepiness culminates in Annie meeting up with the boy – who turns out, surprise, to be in his late 30s – in what looks like Water Tower Place. After feeding her some lines about soul mates and age not mattering, he takes her back to a hotel and rapes her.
What follows is much more complex than the average episode of “To Catch a Predator.” Annie’s father (played by Clive Owen) slowly goes insane, trying valiantly to find the culprit while also struggling to reconcile his anger at Annie with her need for his fatherly support. Meanwhile, Annie tries to protect her attacker, still believing that they are in love. It’s no wonder that Liberato – who in real life is only 15, by the way – won the Best Actress award for this role at last year’s Chicago International Film Festival.
The film is the perfect combination of committed performances, so-real-it-hurts dialogue and authentic Chicago scenery (was the scene of Annie sitting on a bench and looking back at the skyline shot on the lakefill, or was that just me?). Not to mention Schwimmer manages to make the movie culturally relevant without seeming to try too hard. Take, for instance, Annie’s dad’s job as an ad exec for American Apparel – champion of all things verging on pornographic – which fits well with the “exploitation of young girls” theme.
The only scene that strikes the viewer as less than believable is Annie’s first high school party. Maybe I’m just behind the times, but there were certainly no alcohol-fueled parties that featured naked students running around when I was a freshman in high school. But maybe kids just grow up faster in Wilmette.
Trust is in limited release, so one must abandon the comfort of Evanston to see it. And I admit, at first I wasn’t psyched about making a trip all the way downtown to the AMC River East for the sole purpose of seeing a movie, but Trust just might have been worth the El ride.
