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mpringipa
Reviews
The Four-Faced Liar (2010)
A kicking and wicked little movie that deserves a lot of respect!
Consider the glut of trash, by A list actors and studios out there at the moment. Horrifying. I just want to vomit in my mouth every time a new trailer comes on with another two 'A' list actors making a paint by numbers film to clearly pay their mortgage and extravagance. (I cannot mention any names
Jdrmepff and Jpiollfia, as I have no money for people to sue me for). It's a shame that there is hardly anything of interest on the silver screen coming out of Hollywood nowadays, maybe one in 20 movies if we're lucky, so to come across a little gem like this, carried by unknown actors, with a sharp snazzy script, an incredible soundtrack, and voilà you will have knocked me over sideways with a feather. Where do I start? The acting is flawless, seamless, fluid and truly and believably genuine. Remember when actors did that? Genuine. It would be very easy to pigeon hole this into 'lesbian' movie of the year,(sadly I think this has already happened) but it is so much more than this. Deeply and beautifully observed, this is 21st century love. It's about love between friends, irrelevant of sexual preferences, it's about relationships between people without having to say 'despite this they are friends or in love' the fact that Bridget is gay is actually so insignificant that there are no rainbow banners or gongs about Bridget being gay, she just is; and you enter the story just accepting it. The other characters are straight, it's all based in their New York neighbourhood, there are no gay or lesbian bars, no big coming out parties or speeches, the pub they all drink in, could be any straight pub in Britain which probably surprised me more, living in London, I thought we were the only ones with pubs, how wrong I was! And the dynamic of the main character triad with Todd Kubrak as Trip, Emily Peck as Molly and the stunning Marja Lewis Ryan as Bridget is sweetly endearing, sharp, snappy, with wonderfully observed rhetoric on the literature been studied and dare I say, what verbose and articulate city folk talk about whatever their sexual preference when they have a common subject to dissect. ( I was flabbergasted to note at the end credits that who I felt was a secondary character had top cast billing). The relationship that will stick out more is the one between best friends and flat mates, Trip and Bridget, their morning toothpaste ritual and their fond irreverent name calling had me smiling from ear to ear. If you live in a city you may already have this wonderful homogeneity of friends, where sexual preference is no longer something anyone agonises over, where your choice of friends is based on their beliefs, their likes their dislikes, their follies, their triumphs. Even if you are not a city dweller you can easily accept the comradeship between people as just people and nothing else. This movie was a total surprise to me, so much so that I even joined IMDb to give it a good review and champion it a bit, as I felt it needed a straight little British girl to give it a two-thumbs up - now be a good sausage and give it a go... that means go watch it!