Film

Proof (1991)

Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Writer/director Moorhouse's striking first feature deals with blindness, but the opening shot of dark glasses, a white stick and a camera immediately signals its unorthodox approach. Although its main character is a blind photographer, its true subject is emotional security, the need to have faith in what we cannot see, to trust without proof. When 32-year-old Martin (Weaving) befriends amiable kitchen-hand Andy (Crowe), he asks him to describe photographs he has taken but never seen. In this way, he uses his photographs to test people's honesty. But his young housekeeper Celia (Picot), secretly in love with Martin and fiercely jealous, seduces Andy, thereby forcing him to lie to Martin... Moorhouse's deceptively simple snapshot aesthetic, and bold juxtaposition of harrowing and humorous scenes, are both powerful and original. Like the Hockney-style collage Celia creates from photo fragments of Andy's body, the edges don't fit neatly, but a truth emerges from the composite whole. As Andy says, 'Everybody lies, but not all the time'.

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