Rebecca Nelson

Quote:
From the very beginning of Trust, Hal Hartley’s spellbinding second feature, snotty naïveté and cultured cynicism intertwine and dance in locked, hypnotic two-step. Just as teenaged Maria (Adrienne Shelly) tells her parents that she’s been knocked up by her high school’s alpha jock, leading her father to literally drop dead, Matthew (Martin Donovan) throws a tantrum of anti-technological philosophy in the repair division of a computer corporation where he works. While her idyllic future with quarterback Anthony comes crashing to the ground when he rejects her, Matthew remains stilted by his inability to cut ties with his abusive father (John MacKay). They meet-not-particularly-cute in an abandoned home and fall for each other in an odd, intriguingly deadpan way that underlines the unlikeliness of their union.Read More »

Quote:
Jude, a college literature professor, falls for one of his students. She is more interested in the empirical experience of a relationship with a man whose life is ruled by the themes of the Russian Lit. he extolls in class. Jude shows an interesting side of the stigmas associated with transgenerational relationships and how to deal with the inevitable pain of a love doomed to failure.Read More »

Synopsis
The unlikely relationship between a pregnant high school student and a brooding electronics repairman lies at the center of this droll comedy from writer-director Hal Hartley. Intelligent but unconventional, Maria (Adrienne Shelly) has more to worry about than her pregnancy, as her expectant state drives away her boyfriend and triggers a fatal heart attack in her father. Meanwhile, Matthew (Martin Donovan) has his own problems: an abusive father, a heightened sense of morality that prevents him from taking semi-lucrative television repair jobs, and a suicidal streak that causes him to carry around a potentially deadly grenade. The meeting of these troubled minds at first promises to be beneficial for both, but sours as they are forced to interact with each other’s dysfunctional families. As in all of Hartley’s pictures, the narrative is filtered through an amusingly detached sensibility that some may consider an acquired taste.
~ Judd Blaise, All Movie GuideRead More »