Cannes: Day Three

A review of 'Where the Truth Lies', starring Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and Alison Lohman.

May 13 2005

The new film from Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan - a Cannes favourite - screened this morning.

Egoyan's latest, 'Where the Truth Lies', is a period piece that moves back and forth between the 1950s and the 1970s as we explore the strange lives of a much-loved television duo, Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth).

On the surface, Morris and Collins are a Morecambe and Wise for the first generation of American TV viewers. They sing, crack jokes and host an annual telethon for charity.

Behind the scenes, though, the pair enjoy sordid private lives, and during a trip to New Jersey a young girl is found dead in the bathroom of their vast hotel suite.

No mud sticks and the pair are not charged - but their partnership soon disintegrates.

Fifteen years later, an ambitious young journalist, Karen O'Connor (Alison Lohman) rakes up the story, forcing the two men to confront their past.

It's an often interesting study of celebrity, framed in the style of a pulp noir.

Still, there's something strangely anodyne about this film, which lacks a necessary air of grime and dirty intrigue. Too often, it feels like a much-diluted version of 'Mullholland Dr.'

Its slavish devotion to period detail has elicited a bypass of the less tangible elements of this smart story and the focus is more on an unravelling of plot (which relies heavily on voiceover) and less on its key themes - ambition, sexuality and the difference between the private and public.

All three leads give good performances (confirming Kevin Bacon's renaissance especially), and it's certainly well-crafted. Somehow, though, it lacks a unique edge.

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