Trust… And other Hal Hartley movies…

I didn’t know how to feel about Trust at first, I have a bigger thing for the other two Long Island Trilogy movies, Simple Men and The Unbelievable Truth. I remember putting on Henry Fool for the first time, there’s a weird way Hal sucks you in by showing you something supposedly mundane but the entire scene veers into chaos really quickly - someone drops dead, someone else sees two methheads having sex and gets screamed at, someone else gets boned in the middle of a heist by their two accomplices and vows to punish some other blonde out of spite.

Trust is a great film, I had to see someone else praising it to remember. Adrienne Shelley was such a wonderful actress who a lot of people wouldn’t know if you mentioned her. I was so geared up with Where to Land featuring the girl I still follow on Instagram. I think the end result will be amazing, it’s just weird thing there’s another universe where this girl wound up in an indie movie.

I don’t know why Trust failed to win me over, it’s got so much going on. The casting’s off in terms of age, I don’t really see Martin Donovan’s character as particularly young, Shelley’s got that young ingenue look that can pass as teenage. I can’t tell how old Matthew’s supposed to be comparatively but he looks too old and his dad seems too young as well as Maria’s father.

Maria takes too much of the blame for her father’s death, she slaps the guy, he drops from a heart attack, it’s really a horrible coincidence. She’s forced to rapidly grow up and adapt to life immediately after being turfed. She finds someone possibly more worse off but still walks into danger anyway. A baby goes missing, she realises her boyfriend only saw her as a body, now everyone hates her. Matthew’s stuck living with his abusive dad and walks around with a grenade, a small allegory of his internal struggles, his always blowing up on people, one day he’ll pull the pin and all hell will break loose. He and Maria find solace in each other through their mutual displacement, societal rejects on the fringe. He hates repairing TVs, the new opiate of the masses, according to him, in a way he’s his own worst enemy but too much of an idealist to stop himself. He winds up between Maria’s sister Peg and Maria, who needs him more as a human shield against her crotchety bitch of a mother who basically wants her to suffer. She chooses to suffer, and she has a cute make-under when she puts her dorky thick framed glasses back on and finally appeals to Matthew, all the while trying to educate herself rather than remain ignorant as she was before. Maria’s mother decides to make his life more difficult along the way, so Peg’s on his back trying to get him into bed while poor Maria does penance. She takes a menial job, back then you could basically just walk into a factory and do whatever, it’s why Boomers don’t understand why we can’t get a job now. Maria also decides she has to find the father of the stolen baby, she’s doing a lot to make up for something that’s not really her responsibility, so her mother loves having her there as a maid. Peg’s also recently divorced and robbed of her kids. The mother tries to convince Matthew to date Peg, then cracks onto him herself. Matthew would rather Maria be treated kindly than suffer for her supposed sins. The mother doesn’t want to lose Maria she only hides it behind a need to control her because her own life is spiralling, but she’s also hiding Maria’s slap was perfect timing, she could get rid of her husband without a divorce.

The colours in this are a lot brighter than usual, I like Hal’s use of mostly natural tones, but Maria’s gaudy early 90s outfits, the fluorescent pink and orange highly contrasted against the greyness around her. 

Hal’s kinda flew under the radar with the age gap relationships onscreen, he made these movies back when this was more common than people knew (but at least the actors themselves weren’t literal kids, you don’t see Henry with Susan until she’s well over 30). But Matthew’s obviously a grown man and I’d never get away with showing this to my friends any more than I did getting flack for lending my copy of Leon to them or when someone else watched Mysterious Skin with me. Yeah, I can’t share my movies with people and I don’t hate it, it’s another thing I get to like in peace. I put these on more to get off the internet, I thought we lost our connection this morning but it came back anyway.

Trust is fun, it’s got a cute anti-romantic ending. So I moved on to Simple Men, which I have a bigger fondness for. And you get a hot, young Holly Marie Combs before Charmed. And a cop has a fight with a nun. I like you don’t know if Bill’s actually conning Kate, I more found it weird the psycho ex-husband really wasn’t a threat, he looked like a bigger hopeless case than the guy who gave them the shoddy bike. The ex is more a shell of a guy who just wants a jacket, he looks pathetic but Kate fears him, he could easily snap and Bill’s not sure what to think. Everyone’s scared of the asshole until Kate shows up. She’s bolder than all the twits combined, Kate’s resilient and by the end she’s had it with men, clearly, she has to set them straight, Elena’s too innocent and has to run off with the father. Kate resolves things with Jack only to realise Bill’s a criminal too. And he needs her to lie to the cops, rightfully she won’t, she’s done. Bill finally takes it like a man and he ends up pitifully in love with Kate. There’s shades of Amateur in this, what truly makes a man a criminal, what makes him fundamentally dangerous or is he entirely desperate? Kate understands the law from having dealt with Jack, but she’s found someone she may be able to trust in Bill. His big plan to fuck over the next blonde woman he met falls down. He takes one more look at his deadbeat dad, mans up and goes back to Kate to turn himself in. We don’t see his arrest, just a final tender moment with Kate as the Sheriff says off screen, “Don’t move.”

Reality Bites?

I’ve seen this movie ripped to shreds by younger members of the internet and their take was 100% valid. But then I watched dumb clips of Wynona Ryder and Ethan Hawke making out and I felt needless nostalgia for this piece of shit that I was too young to appreciate when I first saw it and am now too old to relate to.

I refused to watch Girls after the scene involving the main character having to ask her parents for money for a personal project. I couldn’t stomach a lot of what that show was depicting even after I’d gotten a job and dealt with my own finances. Even now, I childishly want to divest myself of all financial responsibility purely so I can stop thinking about it. And I’m not broke I’m just jobless and unable to find anything that won’t kill me. I left school with false direction, I didn’t plan past university, I didn’t even really care or was able to conceptualise my future at seventeen, no kid should be forced to anyway, but you are. They didn’t worry about me since my grades were sufficient.

So I saw Reality Bites before I was able to make sense of its ideologies. Our heroine of disillusioned youth, college Valedictorian Lelaina already has a paid internship with a studio, already has a guy named Troy madly in love with her, and she got a BMW for free off her dad, who divorced her mother, so she has to take it to appease a public meltdown between them. And she’s got a gas card for a year’s worth of what would’ve been cheap fuel back then. Shit was bad back then, she makes 400 a week, that isn’t much, sadly I’d settle for it and have. And she dates Ben Stiller who is too attracted to her to be mad she crashed her car into his. He’s not bad in this, I tend to find him annoying. Ethan Hawke got away with looking like unwashed trash which was the style at the time. Troy refuses to get a job because it’s beneath him so Lelaina holds that over him because she’s got a job and her name’s on the lease to the very large shabby apartment they rent, she’s kinda infected with the Boomer mentality that dictates if you work hard, you’ll be fine. Troy’s in a band, he’s too fucking smart but sleeps with groupie types. And he’s insanely jealous of Ben Stiller. Meanwhile, Janeane Garofalo and Steve Zahn hang out and get wasted in the background, one managing the Gap and the other facing an uncertain romantic future as a closeted gay in the mid 90s. Most of Lelaina and Troy’s discourse is her being a bitch to him and him responding in kind while the sexual tension festers between them. 

And we get to see the gang hang out in gas stations stoned and dancing to My Sharona (songs back then were only relevant to my generation when they ended up in TV and movies). This exploration of Gen X on the verge of adulthood was pretty superficial. If you had fuck of money everyone hated you, but if you didn’t have money, you were tolerated, barely. Nowadays, people are waking up to the actual reality that people who got too much too soon can’t sustain their own future while the rest society struggles to make rent and buy food and can’t even save responsibility if they want to. So then they get blamed for their avocado toast addictions instead. Ben Stiller is much nicer to Lelaina but he’s creatively bankrupt and dorky and weird and their interactions are so hard to watch, they can’t get along due to differing tastes but people allegedly still rooted for them as a couple. She’s kind of too young for him in a sense, he’s too straight and responsible but wants to hang out on the fringe just to date her. He doesn’t have big aspirations for a fancy car and house, he’s a college dropout, which was fine if you had a way of getting right into corporate America with the right contacts, but then he’s all wistful about what he’s missing out on. He listens to Frampton which is bad if you’re in another movie about disaffected Gen Xers.

Troy is obnoxious in his jealousy. He’s negging Lelaina’s choice of romantic partner. She negs him back over this, it’s kind of gross but I must’ve thought it was hot at 13. Oh, and I loved Lisa Loeb sincerely and have her one big album I still listen to, and that song was a depressing bop. Plus I sing that Julianna Hatfield song a lot too. Troy’s also very obnoxious about what counts as 90s hipster, anti-Yuppie philosophy. AIDS looms ever present in the background, I think KIDS did a better job of making this a genuine threat versus Vickie getting a clean bill of health that just makes her calm down on her rutting. Lalaina humiliates John Mahoney and puts her foot in it by insulting Vickie’s offer of a job when she’s fired, predictably. Troy sympathises because it means Lelainia’s down on his level. Like it’s fine to be fired repeatedly because fuck your future. I don’t know how I survived with my dumb assery, I didn’t even know how unemployable I was before I was diagnosed, now I’m extra fucked. Troy makes a move anyway, again, he seems to only really want her when she’s down in the dirt. She keeps making her “documentary” of interviews of her friends, all children of divorce who want more than what their parents displayed in terms of romantic relationships. She keeps dating Ben Stiller, again, she’s not really got anything in common with him but he makes her laugh, I guess. Andy Dick jump scare, by the way, and he wasn’t loved by all back then. She’s “over-qualified” for studio work but can’t work for a newspaper because she can’t give the dictionary definition of “irony”, and apparently neither can Troy though he thinks he knows. Once Lelaina’s “rejected” him for Troy, he rejects her outright and she can’t even get sympathy from him.

She even goes through the same exact scene Lena Dunham does in Girls only she’s less demanding about asking her parents for a loan. David Spade jump scare. Again, she had a paying job that wasn’t worth sacrificing, I don’t even think she was about to get fired, she just uses petty retribution but she’s not rewarded in any way. Ben Stiller’s offering her options that she has to consider like selling out to some kind of MTV simulacrum. And she’s all pissy about Troy being out like a stray dog fucking around. Latoya Jackson jump scare. She calls a psychic hotline which obviously keeps you on the line to drain your credit card and rack up a phone bill. I think this was supposed to be more satirical than people thought it was at the time. Everyone’s broke and pissed at her but she has a rich boyfriend and won’t ask him for a loan. She gets a speech not unlike I got when I was crying about a guy outside a bar and I still had a job. Lelaina and Vickie get into a stupid fight when she’s entirely in the wrong but her name’s on the lease. And she gets the “you lack work ethic” speech from her dad, Troy skipped out on a job there because again, principles. There are some parallels with Martin Donovan’s character in Trust, he’s too smart to do menial shit, but Troy likes eating McDonald’s. Lelaina pumps gas only she uses the gas card to get tips (I think, the girl in the gas station seems to think she’s a shifty bitch). She and Troy have a screaming match over his wasted potential and him being a loser, he’s freeloading and a mess and Vickie’s shocked she hasn’t boned him yet. She discusses lesbianism with Lelaina, Vickie’s the one who’s dumping before she’s dumped, she’s decided she has AIDS with no diagnosis, I get it, it’s fucking scary to wait for that information, it’s easy to be so dismal. Lelaina finally apologises for being a bitch which is more I did at her age. Melrose Place reference jump scare. Lelaina thinks she’s made it with Michael’s way too in love with her and she’s more in love with him doing this shit for her until he ruins it. It’s hard to explain what we were like before cell phones, Micheal has a useless one he uses in a phone booth.

Vickie gets a clean bill of health, meanwhile our gay Sammy has to come out to his parents. These two are so much more entertaining as a B plot. We don’t see the coming out scene, only the aftermath. Lelaina edits the film like she has any say in how it’s received once it’s shown to the supposedly infatuated producers Micheal told her about. This movie doesn’t absolutely suck, Troy’s call Lelaina a doily with her lacy dress, Michael gets all pissed about Troy’s negging, she gets stuck in the middle. Troy is an elitist dickbag despite having nothing to his name, his brain is his value, and again that means nothing to capitalism but capitalism betrays her anyway and ruins her vision. She’s let people take her art out of her hands to butcher it. It’s not Michael’s fault necessarily but he’s dumb about how it would be taken. I don’t know how many people wanted to work with MTV back then but I’m sure nobody does now. They kinda “Real World” the shit out of the video. But maybe her version sucked more. But it was real and this is awful and gross and she’s reasonably angry and I can relate, when someone takes your thing and makes a mockery of it you get mad. All this does is give Ben Stiller a moment to be Ben Stiller jumping around like a goof and it’s annoying as fuck. But as a director he’s done a decent job, he somehow had a lot of pull back then only we’ll never see Heat Vision and Jack now.

Once again, our heroine is dejected and rejected and Troy’s there to swoop in and comfort her and be an actual friend. Something about being 23 in the 90s was super important the way it’s not now. 25 is considered too young and underdeveloped. They end up in bed of course but he freaks out and runs away, it’s more comical than dramatic the way he looks at her. She has to panic about “ruining the friendship” like she said they would. Michael has to come in and make it worse. This movie’s on crack it actually goes pretty fast. I can’t find Ben Stiller funny enough to see him as a romantic interest. I see so many shades of Singles in this as well I forgot it predates it. Troy’s all “I made love with someone I love but I’ll fuck up all the time but I’m the best you’ll get”. She walks out anyway and Michael thinks he’s won her over but Troy has to be all Violent Femmes in her face about it. I’m sorry, Stiller is so fucking one note in a serious role. Ethan Hawke has awful teeth by the by. I like Great Expectations but I don’t at the same time. I get why he was popular but why he can seem odious at the same time. This also came out when I loved all the U2 singles but didn’t own them, so shows and movies overused the same three songs. And someone told Wynona she wasn’t pretty enough for movies like who the fuck was that person? Like who do we lynch? She already had terrible self-esteem. Justice for Wynona the robbery shit was so not even close to Lindsay’s BS and she got slapped so much harder.

Troy supposedly runs off to Chicago and she has to hurriedly pack and get a cab that doesn’t wait for her weirdly enough. But he’s there in a suit going on about arcane glimpses of the universe and he loves her and she’s all, I went to go check on you, you’re a mess. They kiss and make up and move out. Tony Robbins jump scare and a fake TV show based on their romance as some dumb meta narrative then I finally get the song. That wasn’t so bad, I wasn’t rolling my eyes but I’m also not a film student who had to really bust their guts to be taken seriously on YouTube as film critic. I think she was also trashing Rent more than this movie.