The truth hurts
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Day 8 Actors support Atom Egoyan’s use of sex scene that raises the discomfort level in Where the Truth Lies
There’s no point beating around the bush like an American movie censor.
Let’s just ask the question everybody wants answered from Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon: How was it simulating threeway naked sex together on camera with Toronto actress Rachel Blanchard in Atom Egoyan’s steamy new movie Where the Truth Lies? “A compromising question,” Firth dodges, expertly pretending it’s the first time he’s heard it. He looks across the hotel boardroom table at Bacon, who is grinning deviously.
Firth hands off the answer to him, working as smoothly as the pair do in the film as the mythical 1950s comedy duo of Vince Collins and Lanny Morris. So how was the sex, Kevin?
“ It’s all in a day’s work,” parries Bacon.
Ba- da- bump. Is that a rim shot we hear?
If only the grannies at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) could have been so easygoing. Last week they slapped Where the Truth Lies with an NC- 17 rating, which means no one 17 or under is allowed to see the film in the U. S.
It effectively shuts the movie, which is receiving its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, out of the many multiplexes, newspapers and video stores in America that refuse to carry NC- 17 material. It won’t be able to get a wide release.
That makes it much harder for the film to make money, but Egoyan and producer Robert Lantos have refused to cut the offending three-way scene, which is the single most important moment in the movie. It explains why Collins ( Firth) and Morris ( Bacon) suddenly broke their successful partnership, and it’s a key link to the murder mystery, finally investigated in the 1970s, that powers the plot. The film will instead be released unrated in the U. S. The scene isn’t even all that explicit by today’s standards. In any place but America, where it’s okay to show endless violence, but not a brief scene of naked thrusting.
That certainly hasn’t been lost on the two stars.
“ I think it got NC- 17 because of the discomfort factor, not because of the excess,” Firth says.
“ The actual sex is not explicit. I’ve seen much, much, much more explicit sex on the shelves of Blockbuster. I think there’s a discomfort in the drama, which shows that the drama has been successful. And that’s exactly what we were looking for.”
He’s looking on the bright side. But Bacon is gloomy about the film’s commercial prospects.