The Truth

"This is not just a murder. This is a cry for help"

I was ready to slam The Truth for its cheat ending, the way it badly undoes much of the clever direction. The more I reflect on it, however, the more I appreciate how well it's been made, almost entirely without compromise on its seriously quirky vision.

The film is a frequently engaging, watchable and often frustrating hodgepodge of genres. It starts as it means to go on, with induced hypnosis, inviting the viewer to visualise an ideal landscape, and with that carefully and solidly pulls the rug out from under us.

In the middle of the country, in long shot, a car deposits a wheelchair, followed by its owner, Candy (Elaine Cassidy). She begins to wheel herself along the road oh-so-slowly. I don't describe it well, but the scene is funny in it's timing, also simple, straightforward and quite audacious.

The film chronicles a therapy week, entitled "Adventures in Truth: A Seven Step program," with its eight needy participants, involving seven chapterised therapy sessions of rapidly degenerating communication efforts at Serenity Lodge, somewhere in the roamin' and gloamin'.

"There's no room for irony in this room", warns therapist Donna (Elizabeth McGovern), as she lays down the ground rules and the sworn oaths that comprise the program.

"New Age mumbo-jumbo!" decries the unco-operative Felix.

The Truth develops into a movie of inventive qualities. Strongly precocious and stylish it has disturbingly frank imagery underlying its bittersweet black comedy. The sullen and sour Candy refuses to share her truth with the group. Mia (Lea Mornar), a Croatian refugee tells them a chilling tale and strips their shield of defensive irony with a few home truths. And then she turns up dead...

As in The Art Of Losing, this event far from derails the film. Indeed, it develops matters further into an entertaining satire of the self-help culture - its visual hypnotherapy sessions are spot on - as well as an occasionally disquieting thriller about trust and revelation.

Co-writer/director George Milton keeps a solid hand on the tone, if not the script. The acting is uniformly strong, but they have to deal out some real clangers. Cheap, titterworthy, but very guilty laughs are aplenty, with the dominatrix piss-drinking sub-plot going on far more than anyone would like.

And that ending... ugh! The Truth's evasive and deliciously mean flavour is destroyed in three minutes flat.