An authentic performance as an impostor
Sometimes the best thing about a movie is the world of it. It can be a place you visit for a couple of hours and remember fondly, even if it isn’t spectacular but merely pleasing.
That could be said of the new comedy “A Little White Lie.” It’s OK — a little better than pretty good, nice to be around, wholly unobjectionable — but there’s something about this one. The cliche would be to say that it’s better than the sum of its parts. But it may be something else: that all its parts — the performances, the characters, the script — are all just a little better than they had to be.
Based on a novel by Chris Belden, “A Little White Lie” is something of a literary satire. But as adapted and directed by Michael Maren, it treads lightly in that direction. It’s really about several things, including midlife disappointment, loneliness and the redemptive power of art.
Kate Hudson plays Simone, an English professor in charge of her college’s struggling literary festival. To boost attendance, she needs to bring in a major literary honcho for the event, and she does.
C.R. Shriver is the kind of literary figure that once captured the public’s imagination, a reclusive genius on the order of J.D. Salinger or Thomas Pynchon. Shriver wrote his one novel in the late 1990s, a massive opus acclaimed as a masterpiece. But the author never did interviews, never made public appearances and never allowed himself to be photographed, so getting him to agree to show up at an obscure literary festival is a major coup.
Just one problem: The professor sent her invitation to the wrong Shriver.
The Shriver (Michael Shannon) who agrees to attend is a handyman living in a broken-down apartment building. He goes to the festival thinking there might be money in it, and then immediately feels bad that he’s deceiving people.
The gem to take from “A Little White Lie” is the performance of Shannon (“George & Tammy,” “The Shape of Water”), whose role gets more and more interesting as the movie goes on. At first he just seems depressed and hesitant. But as we recognize his sensitivity with people and notice the precision of his observations, he emerges as someone with the soul of an artist. This Shriver may be a phony writer, but he seems a lot more authentic than some of the phonies who write.
Shannon brings a pained history to the character. We never know the details, but his performance is enhanced by this. The gentleness of his interaction with Simone is lovely to witness, and Hudson responds with her usual warmth and something more: Simone’s own aura of pained history. Hudson has always been appealing, but something about her performance here suggests an actress fully coming into her own and ready to do her best work.
Don Johnson has a small role as a slightly drunken would-be author, and for a while you might wonder, “Why did Johnson choose to be in this?” By the end, you realize there’s more to this character than meets the eye.
Maren’s direction is tonally right, full of warmth and touches of humor; he makes it an inviting film to watch. The surprise is to find out that, according to Forbes.com, the filming of “A Little White Lie” was interrupted more than halfway in by a 400-day pause due to the COVID pandemic.
You would never know it. Nobody looks older. Nobody’s hair is different. And most importantly, this movie’s best quality — its atmosphere — is unchanged from scene to scene.