Trust

“A Friend Behind The Camera”

When the cast of TV’s “Friends” moved their careers toward feature films, none of those results have been as shockingly surprising as David Schwimmer emerging as the director of one of this year’s strongest and most important films. “Trust” is a movie that every parent should require their teenage daughters to see before they are allowed to use the internet unsupervised. In fact, high schools everywhere should adopt this film as part of their acedemic curriculum.

“Trust” is the greatest movie ever made about statutory rape. It showcases a powerful performance by newcomer Liana Liberato as 14-year Annie Cameron who falls for a boy she meets in an internet chat room for teens. When they finally hook-up at a shopping mall, he is actually a 35-year old man and he seems to have her mentally trapped in a situation that soon becomes sexual.

Liberato undergoes a series of personality transformations that would be challenging even for the most acclaimed actresses. We first meet Annie as a happy, well-adjusted, wide-eyed optimist on the eve of her 14^th birthday where her parents give her a new laptop computer. Gradually, Annie withdraws from her family by doing what most teens do, becoming addicted to the internet. Then we see her grow up quickly as she discovers first love, loses her virginity, experiences her first heartbreak and humiliation, and learns the hard way about the dark side of life. The young Liberato’s performance is deeply moving in a way that suggests she could be this year’s Jennifer Lawrence (the Oscar-nominated star of last year’s “Winter’s Bone”).

When Annie’s best friend alerts officials that Annie might be the victim of a sexual predator, the FBI gets involved and the system Annie is thrust into further victimizes her in a way that sort of makes the original crime seem less important than the aftermath. Schwimmer does a remarkable job of dancing on eggshells in that he’s able to get us to sympathize equally with everyone affected by these events, especially Annie’s parents played by Clive Owen and Catherine Keener.

Keener wrestles with how best to approach these events as a caring mother. Owen seeks vigilante justice in a way that reminds us of George C. Scott searching the porn world for his runaway daughter in Paul Schrader’s 1979 film “Hardcore”. There are no throwaway characters or subplots here, and the performances of Liberato, Owen and Keener demand and deserve consideration come Oscar time.

The importance of this film for teen girls ages 13 through 18 should not be understated. Yet those scumbag idiots at the MPAA have given “Trust” an ‘R’ rating, restricting it to anyone under 17 unless accompanied by a parent. I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it would be for a teen to have to watch this movie with their parents. This is a film teens need to see with other teens. They are their own support group. They have each other’s backs when they’re out in the world, at school or at a shopping mall. The MPAA has inexplicably done a disservice to parents, and to the makers of this film who clearly care deeply about delivering a message to a very specific audience, now restricted. Oh, but that audio and visual assault called “Sucker Punch” is rated PG-13! The MPAA is what’s wrong with this country.

DVD Double Feature:

Thanks to the explosive performances of its cast, “Trust” manages to be extremely entertaining without exploiting its subject matter for the purpose of entertainment. The opposite is true of 2005’s “Hard Candy” which felt a bit exploitative in using the subject of statutory rape as the basis for a twisty thriller. Ellen Page plays a young girl who turns the tables on a sexual predator (Patrick Wilson) by trapping him into going on a date, then strapping him to a table and threatening to castrate him.