Trust (1990)

After being thrown out of her house, Maria encounters a married woman who complains of not having children. Maria ends up in an abandoned house, where she meets Matthew. When a baby is kidnapped Maria sets out to find the woman.

Director:

Hal Hartley

Writer:

Hal Hartley

Stars:

Adrienne Shelly, Martin Donovan, Rebecca Nelson

4 wins & 2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Adrienne Shelly	...	Maria Coughlin
Martin Donovan	...	Matthew Slaughter
Rebecca Nelson	...	Jean Coughlin (as Merritt Nelson)
John MacKay	...	Jim Slaughter
Edie Falco	...	Peg Coughlin
Gary Sauer	...	Anthony
Matt Malloy	...	Ed
Suzanne Costollos	...	Rachel
Jeff Howard	...	Robert
Karen Sillas	...	Nurse Paine
Tom Thon	...	Deli Man
Hannah Sullivan	...	Ruark Boss (as Patricia Sullivan)
Marko Hunt	...	John Coughlin
Kathryn Mederos	...	Factory Woman
Bill Sage	...	John Bill

Storyline

When high school dropout Maria Coughlin announces her pregnancy to her parents, her father drops dead on the floor. Her mother kicks her out of the house and her boyfriend dumps her, so Maria is left alone and homeless. This is when she meets Matthew Slaughter. Matthew is an educated high school graduate with a great talent for fixing electronic devices, but he can't hang on to a job because of his principled attitude towards quality. When Maria accepts Matthew's offer to help her, they begin to form a relationship with each other in which both of them begin to change.

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Plot Keywords:

television set | tv set | broken tv | loss of job | bathroom | 

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Taglines:

A slightly twisted comedy

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for language

Did You Know?

Trivia

In an interview, Hal Hartley once explained that he made the movie on the spur of the moment because he wanted to work with Shelly again immediately after making The Unbelievable Truth (1989), so he had very little money and very little time. The movie was shot in 11 days. The reason he could do that, he said, was because so much of the direction was implied in the dialogue. The dialogue pretty much told the actors what to do.

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Quotes

Maria Coughlin: Do you miss your kids?
Peg Coughlin: Sure.
Maria: Do you hate your husband?
Peg: Absolutely.
Maria: Would you ever get married again?
Peg: Of course.

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Connections

Referenced in Crying? (2003)

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Soundtracks

Walk Away
Written by Hub Moore
Performed by The Great Outdoors

User Reviews

Low-key Hal Hartley, view at least twice or don't

I didn't understand it right after the first viewing, but 'Trust' certainly is of Hal Hartley's finest works, excelled only by the somewhat more conventional drama 'Henry Fool'. As with many other of Hartley's earlier works, it takes a while to let the film sink into you. But with the second viewing one starts to appreciate the film's subtilities, both the dry absurd humour and the fine, deeply compassionate portraits of the characters.

The story starts up with a scene typical for Hartley: rebellious teenager Maria Coughlin informs her parents that not only will she drop out of high school, she is also pregnant. A quarrel takes place, and when her father calls her 'slut' she slaps him in the face. He drops down dead. The movie can begin.

Things get ugly for Maria. Her boyfriend, a chauvinist pig, leaves her when she informs him that she's pregnant, claiming he's not the father anyway. And at home her mother waits for her and coolly claims that since Maria's killed her husband, she is now forever in her mother's debt and have to work for her. Never again will she do housework... This is when she meets up with Matthew Slaughter, a truly gifted engineer but with a somewhat sociopathic behaviour, and filled to the brim with anger and hatered.

Martin Donovan truly does an outstanding portrait of Matthew, and perfectly manages to forge his paradoxal feelings of extreme anger and vulnerability into a fully working unit.

A deeply moving story of two scarred, somewhat maladjusted souls manage to find each other, told in a low-key mood that doesn't get to you immediately. But eventually it does, and when it does...you're hooked.

8/10

Details

Country:

UK USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

20 September 1991 (UK)

Also Known As:

Trust

Filming Locations:

Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$700,000 (estimated)

Gross USA:

$356,122

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$357,400

Company Credits

Production Co:

Channel Four Films, Republic Pictures (II), True Fiction Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

107 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1