Trust the Man

Poor Julianne Moore: She takes quite a beating in real-life hubby Bart Freundlich’s new romantic comedy. Indelicately scarfing down an enormous piece of cake, she chokes and gasps for air—rather too convincingly—before onscreen partner David Duchovny administers the Heimlich. Later she gets whacked in the eye with a wooden spoon and sports one hell of a shiner through the next scene. Okay, Moore shouldn’t be handled with kid gloves, but still: Does she really deserve this treatment? Trust the Man follows the romantic fortunes of four downtown New Yorkers and best friends: Rebecca (Moore) and Tom (Duchovny), a wearily wedded couple with two rambunctious kids and no sex life; and Tobey (Crudup) and Elaine (Gyllenhaal), a younger pair stuck in marriageless, babyless limbo. Relationship troubles, career woes, sexual infidelities: All are discussed at clever dinner parties and in fashionable restaurants, or walking down the spruce streets of Bloomberg-era New York. “Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if you had chosen someone else?” Elaine asks Rebecca, and it’s the kind of cloying, pseudoprofound inquiry that signals the film’s higher aspirations. Trust the Man aims for the knowing comedy of Annie Hall or Manhattan but comes closer to the ersatz epiphanies of Friends. (Opens Fri; Click here for venues.) — Tom Beer