by Annette Basile
Worth: $19.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Elio Germano, Federica Rosellini, Pilar Fogliati, Vittoria Puccini
Intro:
… an engrossing and fully realised film …
With a dark and poetic visual language – where paranoid imaginings slam against reality – Trust is something we haven’t quite seen before.
It’s best not to say too much about the striking opening scene, other than that it sets the tone, and the extraordinary score, by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, is revealed as a key ingredient in this suspenseful psychological thriller.
Set in a Rome that’s free of famous landmarks, Trust centres on a popular high school teacher, Pietro (Elio Germano) and his relationship with former student Teresa (Federica Rosellini) and follows two timelines – one in Pietro’s paranoid present day, and another that begins with Pietro and Teresa at school, the class discussing the film’s overarching themes, love and fear.
With school over, Pietro tracks down former student Teresa, who’s working as a waitress. She’s a gifted mathematician and he thinks that she’s wasting her talent. They begin a passionate affair, he encourages her to continue her education, and it all goes fairly swimmingly until the night Teresa says that she wants to solidify their bond by exchanging secrets. They whisper the secrets into each other’s ears – the audience isn’t privy to the information exchange. All we know is that hers is bad but his is worse, and it will destroy his life if it’s revealed.
Teresa ends up in America, while Pietro marries Nadia (Vittoria Puccini) and finds career success advising the government on education. But he fears Teresa could reveal his secret. Meanwhile, the viewer hangs in suspense … What did he do? Is this a film that will reveal all or leave us guessing? And, incidentally, what’s Teresa’s secret?
Adding to this suspense is Yorke’s score (which includes the talents of the London Contemporary Orchestra). It’s jarring, sometimes discordant, and funereal. It’s as integral to Trust as the famous zither soundtrack is to The Third Man – a score that 21st century ears may struggle with but is nevertheless inseparable from the 1949 noir classic. Yorke’s soundtrack is also inseparable from Trust. It drives the tension, underlines it, punctuates it.
The script is strong, with symbolism woven in, like the picture that abruptly falls from the wall during a love scene. Visually, it’s equally strong, with carefully composed framing, non-standard camera angles and a dash of Hitchcock.
The performances cannot be faulted. But as Teresa, Rosellini is perhaps too good, almost eclipsing the other players. She’s intense but controlled as she transforms from a high school student in one timeline, to a revered middle-aged maths genius in another.
Director Daniele Luchetti co-wrote this, based on Domenico Starnone’s novel. He’s made all the right decisions here – keeping the same actors to play both the older and younger versions of their characters pays off (the age make-up is flawless).
Luchetti has delivered an engrossing and fully realised film – one that lodges in your mind and demands you to think.
