Lie Exposed
Lie Exposed
Cast: Leslie Hope, Jeff Kober,
Bruce Greenwood Director: Jerry Ciccoritti
Duration: 1 h 32 m
Every so often there comes along a Canadian film to remind us of the stereotypical Cancon of old. You know, the kind of loosely plotted stories where couples stand in dark rooms and talk darkly and obliquely, and drink darkly, and glance obliquely at one another, until 90 minutes pass and the whole exercise comes to an end with no one in the film any wiser, and no one in the audience any more entertained.
Thankfully, they’re rare these days. Even in the cinematic doldrums of January and February I’ve already seen five top-notch Canadian films this year — Luba, And the Birds Rained Down, Rabid, Nose to Tail, and Space & Time. But alas, Lie Exposed doesn’t make that list; it’s a throwback of the worst kind.
Directed by Jerry Ciccoritti, Lie Exposed was written by Jeff Kober, adapting a play he wrote called Pornography. ( You can understand the name change; imagine trying to explain to your spouse that you were Googling Pornography to see where it was playing. Even the truth sounds suspect.)
Leslie Hope stars as Melanie, an alcoholic actor who was diagnosed with cancer and responded by running off to California with a photographer, played by Kober. She left her husband ( Bruce Greenwood) in Toronto, but on her return they are staging a show of very intimate photographs of Melanie.
The film mostly consists of reactions to the show by various couples, interspersed with artsy black- and- white photos of them. Perry and Graciela ( Tony Nappo, Paula Rivera) get into a debate about the artistic merits of the work, while Betsy (Grace Lynn Kung) gets angry at her husband Gregg ( Benjamin Ayres) over his watching small- p pornography — i. e., not the play Pornography.
The most compelling scene, if only just barely, is the one in which cab- driver Brian ( David Hewlett) embarks on a shaggy- dog story about the time he picked up a couple of Finns who invited him back to their place for some weed. Alas, the story peters out just as it’s getting interesting, with Hewlett then asking his partner Mickey (Kristin Lehman): “Is this a seduction?”
Lie Exposed feels a bit like that. It tries to charm us and pull us into its embrace, but this viewer isn’t feeling wooed. Π1/2