Very well executed

Lack of good storyline.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Maria Coughlin (Adrienne Shelly) announces to her parents her plans to quit high school, pregnancy, and intention to marry her boyfriend Anthony. Her boyfriend refuses and her father drops dead soon from the shock. Her mother kicks her out of the house. She meets Matthew Slaughter (Martin Donovan) who takes her in. He's an electronics repairman who hates TV's cultural influence. He quits his job and fights with his father. He steals a hand grenade from his veteran father. Maria and Matthew start a relationship based on respect, admiration, and trust = love.Hal Hartley's mannered dialogue is similar to Wes Anderson but it doesn't have his later polish. This doesn't have quite the comedic tone needed. What it has is the magnetic Adrienne Shelly. She keeps this movie alive when it starts to sputter with its insistent style. There also has Edie Falco as the older sister. Hal Hartley definitely has a style and seems intent on using it no matter what.

From the first sequence of Hal Hartley's Trust a viewer knows he's in for a dark, obscure ride. It opens with the shot of a young teen named Maria (Adrienne Shelly), smoking while being scolded by her parents on what a punk deviant she is after being kicked out of school. She informs them that she is pregnant and the consumption of shock and shame leads to her father's on-spot heart attack and death. This should give you an inkling on what kind of film you're in for.Maria winds up running away from home to inform her jock-boyfriend she is pregnant. He, of course, couldn't care less, as he wants to focus on sports with little distraction. Now, Maria is alone until she meets Matthew (Martin Donovan), a man whose life keeps intercepting the focus of the film up until this point. Matthew lives with his abusive father, who looks on to his son with a condescending eye. He regards him as an irrelevant failure with no ability to hold down a job. This puts Matthew in a suicidal position, barely holding on as a whole. When both of them meet, we truly see that misery loves company.The relationship Maria and Matthew have in the film is talky and quiet, with Matthew bringing detached realism into the life of Maria's, which is already dominated by teenage naivety. Hartley paints both characters as flawed people that do not magically become repaired by each other, but find a more stable sense of life and trust in their opposites. Shelley captures the reckless spirit of Maria well, and Donovan is superb at giving his sadsack character Matthew a face and a soul. Their chemistry is the driving force behind Trust's success.There's a constant use of bright, vibrant color in the film that really amplifies the overall look and tone of the picture. In the opening shot is where this can be viewed as being most prominent. As stated, Shelley remains in close-up and the colors of her makeup and lip gloss remain eye-popping and totally "in your face." The remainder of the movie can occasionally turn up as grim, with a gray palette, but often does Hartley gather up the brightest, most visually attractive colors to see on-screen.But where Trust really excels is in its dialog. Smooth, fluent, and often subversively philosophical in terms of direct contact, he establishes a relationship between two unlikely characters that we can see grow and build as time goes on. They expand from the one-dimensional caricatures we initially view them as to complete humans we can recognize and sympathize with.Trust is the second film from Hal Hartley, who has made a career out of making comedy-dramas with an emphasis on character and monologues. He establishes himself quaintly here, assuring his independent status, and carefully makes use of such neglected things as mood and tone to set a nice standard in this drama. It's the kind of feeling that I see many going for. We walk in unsure, but emerge with the mindset that we've seen a new filmmaking talent in the works. God, do I love that feeling.Starring: Adrienne Shelly and Martin Donovan. Directed by: Hal Hartley.

Most popular films delineate their stories in a rather comical and insipid way: the dialogue is often exchanged between characters as if it were bounced off a Spartan gladiator - and, in some cases very little to short-of-nothing is penetrable in the film."Trust" is a film that inverses that idea - and does so with wit, charm, and most importantly: astute cleverness. The story begins with careful sequencing that portrays each character a new journey of life. We see an antisocial protagonist, a pregnant girl who recently dropped out of high school, and a motherly type whose apathy is cunning and partially insane. "Trust" is a love story that defies any cliché of filmmaking. The lead character pours his organism into the film and invokes integrity of personality without apprehension or any constipation (who can forget that wit from Mr Slaughter??) The film is about what happens when we take chances, and don't take chances. In short: it's about being and what happens when we share our being with others.The film's sequencing is what I loved most of all. It's weaved into a fabric that reminded me of early avant-garde films (the envelope of the story is reminiscent of Kubricks's older film "The Killing") and perhaps more-or-less surprising is the protagonist(played by Martin Donovan) exchanges silence; those rare moments in the film that can't help to be compared to the work of Godard. Momentarily, it shines solicitude and violence (the symbolism is slightly ironic and very insincere.) My favorite moments are about jeering characters who feel unwanted.A definite must-watch. I recommend it to anyone, everyone.

A father drops dead after arguing with his daughter, who's pregnant. In another house a grown man is still living at home with his father and can't clean the bathroom to suit him. Together these stories come together with vivid reality, almost too much so. Despite the feeling they seem to be getting nowhere and fast, its mature take on people's troubles and the way the two leads connect make for an intelligent and engrossing film. I don't know if I would really want to see it again, but the more the viewer thinks about it after wards, you realize just how much it makes an impression on you. The viewer is really invested in these people and that's a credit to the writers and makers of this film, which stars Adrienne Shelley and Martin Donovan and a young Edie Falco, before The Sopranos. If you want a real slice of life with an ending that's not really an ending, but just the beginning of another stage, watch this and learn about "Trust."