LYING (2009)

directed by M. Blash


This is the most pretentious film I've ever seen and maybe ever will. Most of the time when a film is hideously pretentious, there's at least some creativity to it. Here, there's a pretty location, and some semi-famous chicks (Chloe Sevigny, Jena Malone, and Leelee Sobieski). Here's the plot: writer wants to write about someone who lies and use this awesome house where he went to a party once. He doesn't get permission to use the house, but the daughter of the house's owner wants to be in a movie, so they're willing to put up some financing and if he wants the house, here's the architect's name, he can find a house similar to it. He does. He puts the daughter in the movie, has the entreprenurial flair to at least get Chloe, Jena, and Leelee attached to it, writes a 26-page scriptment which is the basis for what's essentially a 90-minute improvisational effort on the part of the actresses' involved. Mind you, it doesn't appear that any of them have any training in improv. (by the way, if you're going to improv... have training in improv. Please.) Every scene is overwraught, the dialogue is pedestrian at best. The character's are barely explained and have almost no relationship to one another.

I'll give it this: for the sheer sake of unpredictability, it was compelling. I had no idea what was happening or why, and longed to know what the director's angle was. Was everything symbolic? Was it actually a comedy, like a giant in-joke? Would any of the girls make out? The answers to those questions were: No, I mean, I guess not, I hadn't thought of that, that's interesting, okay, sure, yeah, it's all symbolic. I'll let you come up with why.... A giant in-joke? Oh, what a great idea. Maybe it is all a giant in-joke. I find it pretty funny in places.... Lesbians? No, that's so cliche and sophomoric. I'm not going to put my actresses through that. Well, I mean, if they wanted to do it, sure, but in the scriptment for this scene, I have them putting on clothes like grandma's attic and then they hear a voice singing opera and they go look for it. I love Chloe's idea to not like the music and make Jena change the music right before the opera starts. That's brilliant, that puts you into the mode of listening to the music. I made this scene ten minutes long because there are so many beautiful rooms to look for the music in. Isn't this a beautiful house?

I hate this movie because it was made, and it seems to have been made by an amateur with great resources at his disposal, but with little very little notion or care to story. I would have an open mind about it if he perhaps he had a performance art angle to it, had some sense of passion about it, but here is an instant where a person decided to make a movie but had no grand desire for how it was made. It basically had to have a character that lied all the time and a house. That was all he was after. He financed this? Apparently, one of the financers wanted potty humor in it. Wouldn't do it unless there was potty humor. I hate this movie, I hate any crew member that had direct creative input, and I really resent Jena and Leelee for giving this movie the publicity edge to get it in my girlfriend's line of sight at Movie Gallery.


4.90/10