Trust **** (1990, Adrienne Shelly, Martin Donovan, Rebecca Nelson, Edie Falco) – Classic Movie Review 7095

Writer-director Hal Hartley’s nicely written, tremendously well performed, deliciously dark 1991 cult comedy of romance in drab, middle-class Long Island is brimming over with engaging characters and offbeat humour.

Adrienne Shelly stars as Maria Coughlin, a teenage high school dropout punkette who becomes pregnant by her unsympathetic jock boyfriend. The news so shocks her father that he drops dead of a heart attack, leaving his accident-prone daughter to take up with droll, educated computer repairman Matthew Slaughter (Martin Donovan), who offers to help her.

Also in the cast are Merritt Nelson [Rebecca Nelson], John MacKay, Edie Falco, Gary Sauer, Matt Malloy, Karen Sillas, Tom Thon, Bill Sage and Marko Hunt.

Trust is directed by Hal Hartley, runs 107 minutes, is made by True Fiction Pictures, Channel Four Films, Republic Pictures and Zenith Entertainment, is released by Palace (UK), is written by Hal Hartley, is shot by Michael Spiller, is produced by Bruce Weiss and scored by Phil Reed.

The movie was shot in 11 days on a budget of $700,000. On the downside, it took only $356,122 in the US.

It is rated R for language.

It is shot at Lindenhurst, Smithtown and Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, US.

Hartley made it to work again with Shelly after The Unbelievable Truth (1989). He went on to make Surviving Desire, Simple Men, Amateur, Flirt, Henry Fool and The Book of Life.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7095

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