Trust

1990
R
1h 47m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

After being thrown out of her house, Maria encounters a married woman who complains of not having children. Maria ends up in an abandoned house, where she meets Matthew. When a baby is kidna... Read allAfter being thrown out of her house, Maria encounters a married woman who complains of not having children. Maria ends up in an abandoned house, where she meets Matthew. When a baby is kidnapped Maria sets out to find the woman.After being thrown out of her house, Maria encounters a married woman who complains of not having children. Maria ends up in an abandoned house, where she meets Matthew. When a baby is kidnapped Maria sets out to find the woman.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.4/10

13K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 4 wins & 2 nominations

Trivia
In an interview, Hal Hartley once explained that he made the movie on the spur of the moment because he wanted to work with Shelly again immediately after making The Unbelievable Truth (1989), so he had very little money and very little time. The movie was shot in 11 days. The reason he could do that, he said, was because so much of the direction was implied in the dialogue. The dialogue pretty much told the actors what to do.

Quotes
Maria: Not because you love me or anything like that?
Matthew: I respect and admire you.
Maria: Is that love?
Matthew: No, that's respect and admiration.

Connections
Featured in Siskel & Ebert: V.I. Warshawski/Trust/Life Stinks/Mobsters/Slacker (1991)

Soundtracks
Walk Away
Written by Hub Moore
Performed by The Great Outdoors

User reviews68

Review

Featured review

8/10

Low-key Hal Hartley, view at least twice or don't

I didn't understand it right after the first viewing, but 'Trust' certainly is of Hal Hartley's finest works, excelled only by the somewhat more conventional drama 'Henry Fool'. As with many other of Hartley's earlier works, it takes a while to let the film sink into you. But with the second viewing one starts to appreciate the film's subtilities, both the dry absurd humour and the fine, deeply compassionate portraits of the characters.

The story starts up with a scene typical for Hartley: rebellious teenager Maria Coughlin informs her parents that not only will she drop out of high school, she is also pregnant. A quarrel takes place, and when her father calls her 'slut' she slaps him in the face. He drops down dead. The movie can begin.

Things get ugly for Maria. Her boyfriend, a chauvinist pig, leaves her when she informs him that she's pregnant, claiming he's not the father anyway. And at home her mother waits for her and coolly claims that since Maria's killed her husband, she is now forever in her mother's debt and have to work for her. Never again will she do housework... This is when she meets up with Matthew Slaughter, a truly gifted engineer but with a somewhat sociopathic behaviour, and filled to the brim with anger and hatered.

Martin Donovan truly does an outstanding portrait of Matthew, and perfectly manages to forge his paradoxal feelings of extreme anger and vulnerability into a fully working unit.

A deeply moving story of two scarred, somewhat maladjusted souls manage to find each other, told in a low-key mood that doesn't get to you immediately. But eventually it does, and when it does...you're hooked.

8/10