Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

classicsoncall This is the kind of movie that would have resonated more with me when I was a lot younger, say in my Twenties or Thirties. The story it tells is effectively done, involving real people in credible situations, who in many ways find themselves dysfunctional in parts of their lives. I thought the actions of mother Jean Coughlin (Rebecca Nelson) to cause a rift between her daughter Maria (Adrienne Shelly) and Matthew (Martin Donovan) were especially despicable. Why that scenario didn't blow up was a question mark I had coming out of the picture. The other head scratcher was when Robert Howard (Jeff Howard) fainted dead away at the sight of Maria the first time at the train station - Why? There was no apparent reason for that to have occurred. So there appeared to be a few holes in the story that could have been handled a bit better. I also considered the maturity level Maria possessed for being a high school dropout, she handled herself well in conversation with the much better educated Matthew. Particularly when she related to the idea of respect, admiration and trust as being synonymous with love. She did that without the thesaurus which I thought was significantly above her grade level. I could almost relate to Matthew's obsession with quality control but he took things too far at his workplace. It seemed to me that he could have upgraded his career choices by moving on to a more ethical firm. He wouldn't have needed a hand grenade to do it.Perhaps my biggest takeaway from the story - I still would like to know what would have happened if Matthew followed through on trusting Maria to catch him off the ledge. The distraction that occurred was just a bit too convenient to take their minds off the matter at hand.

Steve Pulaski From the first sequence of Hal Hartley's Trust a viewer knows he's in for a dark, obscure ride. It opens with the shot of a young teen named Maria (Adrienne Shelly), smoking while being scolded by her parents on what a punk deviant she is after being kicked out of school. She informs them that she is pregnant and the consumption of shock and shame leads to her father's on-spot heart attack and death. This should give you an inkling on what kind of film you're in for.Maria winds up running away from home to inform her jock-boyfriend she is pregnant. He, of course, couldn't care less, as he wants to focus on sports with little distraction. Now, Maria is alone until she meets Matthew (Martin Donovan), a man whose life keeps intercepting the focus of the film up until this point. Matthew lives with his abusive father, who looks on to his son with a condescending eye. He regards him as an irrelevant failure with no ability to hold down a job. This puts Matthew in a suicidal position, barely holding on as a whole. When both of them meet, we truly see that misery loves company.The relationship Maria and Matthew have in the film is talky and quiet, with Matthew bringing detached realism into the life of Maria's, which is already dominated by teenage naivety. Hartley paints both characters as flawed people that do not magically become repaired by each other, but find a more stable sense of life and trust in their opposites. Shelley captures the reckless spirit of Maria well, and Donovan is superb at giving his sadsack character Matthew a face and a soul. Their chemistry is the driving force behind Trust's success.There's a constant use of bright, vibrant color in the film that really amplifies the overall look and tone of the picture. In the opening shot is where this can be viewed as being most prominent. As stated, Shelley remains in close-up and the colors of her makeup and lip gloss remain eye-popping and totally "in your face." The remainder of the movie can occasionally turn up as grim, with a gray palette, but often does Hartley gather up the brightest, most visually attractive colors to see on-screen.But where Trust really excels is in its dialog. Smooth, fluent, and often subversively philosophical in terms of direct contact, he establishes a relationship between two unlikely characters that we can see grow and build as time goes on. They expand from the one-dimensional caricatures we initially view them as to complete humans we can recognize and sympathize with.Trust is the second film from Hal Hartley, who has made a career out of making comedy-dramas with an emphasis on character and monologues. He establishes himself quaintly here, assuring his independent status, and carefully makes use of such neglected things as mood and tone to set a nice standard in this drama. It's the kind of feeling that I see many going for. We walk in unsure, but emerge with the mindset that we've seen a new filmmaking talent in the works. God, do I love that feeling.Starring: Adrienne Shelly and Martin Donovan. Directed by: Hal Hartley.

TheSteelHelmetReturns It was toss-up between what film will represent the early nineties style of independent films that I like – Trust could easily be replaced with Chasing Amy, Swingers, Metropolitan, Dazed and Confused or even Scream but I chose this Hal Hartley flick because I think it is the most profound in exploring the relationships we have with our partners, our family and the people in our immediate environment as well as having the most charming minimalist style to express those thoughts. A lot of the film is pretty much shot with talking heads but the execution works well because of the deadpan while nuance performances of a cast who remain very appealing and likable regardless of the dark twists and turns the story takes. Trust is probably the only Hal Hartley film you can guarantee finding at JB Hifi in Australia at any time and I definitely recommend it as an impulse purchase.

LouE15 An all-time favourite. Hal Hartley's world may take some getting used to – and judging from some reviews here, not everyone does – but once you're in, it's a parallel universe where disaffected people exchange darkly funny deadpan lines in a rhythmic fashion, reflecting on weighty topics whilst existing in a bleak, northern working town world. Hartley regulars Martin Donovan and the late, wonderful Adrienne Shelly perfectly represent disaffection and spoilt self-inflicted misery respectively. Their growing intimacy echoes that of the viewer, being drawn into this world. Judging by how relatively few user reviews Hartley's films get on IMDb, I think they're maybe being lost slightly in the mists of time. But younger film fans shouldn't be put off by the look or sound, which fixes them in time: if you liked "Ghost World" I think you'll like this - It's as rebellious, and as dark and funny.Donovan's character, Matthew, is bored, angry, an electronics genius. His control freak, bully Dad keeps fixing him up with dead-end electronics jobs, and Matthew can't stand them. He's a picture of hopeless disaffection. Shelley's Maria is an over-dressed, over-made-up brat, convinced her life is all mapped out. She's pregnant, and her blunt, selfish breaking of the news to her parents proves the death stroke to her father. With her bright hair, her pink painted pout, her awful college football boyfriend and her breezy confidence that life will bend to her shallow desires, she's just made for a fall in the biblical tradition.They meet, as they must, and drag each other through a difficult transition from where they are, to where they might, just possibly, get to be, together. They both try to transform, with varying results. They discuss love and the nature of love; her vengeful mother tries to trick them both; Matthew, whose stark life becomes more complicated, tries to stick with the steady dead end job he's always despised; Maria's lurid life steadily simplifies to beautifully stark things. Sideline characters add colour; the weary nurse at the abortion clinic, the divorcée sister, Matthew's dad, the baby-thief.As a troubled teenager, I watched Hal Hartley's films on the - then - visionary Channel 4 in Britain in the late 80s and early 90s, and felt that they were speaking to me, directly, not necessarily with comforting messages of hope – just communicating, as little else around me then seemed to have the power to do.Hartley's films are in no way pieces of realism, or even magical realism. His style embraces artifice, but in so doing he creates a very consistent world, where themes and character types recur, and in being artificial, expose the artificial in life, too. It's somewhat bleak, but I find that a very comforting place to be. I can't recommend his films highly enough for anyone for whom the ultra-shallow glossiness of mainstream Hollywood output is just not good enough: "Trust", "The Unbelievable Truth" and "Amateur" are the ones to see.