Trust

In America they’ve got ‘To Catch a Predator’, a reality TV show that entraps men looking for underage sex. So full credit to ‘Friends’ actor David Schwimmer for directing ‘Trust’, an exercise in sober drama and a middle-class cautionary tale which explores a family ripped up by the roots after the rape of a 14-year-old girl. At its heart is a star-in-the-making performance by 15-year-old Liana Liberato as Annie, a smart, funny, slightly shy suburban kid who meets a boy in a teen chat-room.

The seduction is horribly plausible. This new friend tells Annie he’s 16. They flirt. He messages her a confession: actually he’s a college student. His age creeps up and when they meet he’s 40 and a nondescript clean-cut family man in dad-chinos. And an expert manipulator: ‘I thought you were old enough to handle this?’ Schwimmer deals with the rape, in a hotel room, sensitively – his focus is on the nuclear fallout in Annie’s family. Clive Owen and Catherine Keener play distraught parents, and both are predictably superb. This is thoroughly intelligent drama, though it will probably have to wait for a TV slot to be widely seen.