Few words inspire less trust than “trust me.” Writer/director Clark Gregg doesn’t may or may not understand that. His latest film takes the suspect phrase as its title and develops underneath it as, funnily enough, a story about a man named Howard Holloway who very much can be trusted in a duplicitous industry that holds no place for him. A good man in a bad world, singularly unwilling – but often tempted – to sacrifice his soul for success. Hollywood is going to eat Howard alive.
Although Trust Me opens with a gunshot and promises to get back to it later, Gregg’s film isn’t a noir in an aesthetic sense. He abandons chiaroscuro in favor of a hazily, warm, workaday aesthetic, and focuses on the unfortunate choices in the hands of his characters instead of firearms. But tonally his film is dangerous and bleak. The people within it may be funny, and a few may even have a decent soul, but they operate entirely within an entertainment industry that depends on sudden about face shifts in loyalty, and that prioritizes the latest teen fantasy over the possibility that its star may be the victim of abuse.
Related: Clark Gregg describes the 8-hour first draft of Trust Me.
Howard is an agent to the child stars, and not a particularly good one. He knows the ins and outs and but he’s consistently trampled by his competitors (personified by a characteristically smug Sam Rockwell) and the producers who view him as an easily smashed roadblock to outright talent exploitation. Howard is losing clients left and right, trying and failing to smuggle his way into school plays to scout their casts. He can’t compete anymore. He’s not enough of an asshole.
But his schlubby sensitivity attracts the attention of a young talent named Lydia, played by a likewise talented Saxon Sharbino, whose relationship with her alcoholic father (Paul Sparks) forces her to look elsewhere for management advice. For once, Howard is holding all the cards: Lydia is clearly destined for great things and already in talks for a starmaking role when she hires him. All Howard needs to do is seal the deal, and all he needs to do to seal the deal is look the other way.
Gregg’s writing and direction is sensitive but his performance as Howard Holloway is Trust Me’s greatest asset. He exudes moral conflict, and makes it easy to believe that this man has Lydia’s best interests at heart but that he also really, really wants a new car. As the plot unfolds and Howard is forced to confront the possibility that protecting Lydia may require him to act more like her surrogate father than do his job – or, in an almost perverse twist, vice-versa – his worn face speaks volumes. He’s trapped in a Mametian quagmire and he drags us right down with him.
Trust Me is a neither here nor there kind of movie: not quite funny enough to be labeled a comedy, a little too buoyand enough to outright thrill. It’s in the middle and trying to do the best it can that stand out, not unlike its protagonist. Although Gregg ultimately caves in to a needlessly overt sentimentality, particularly through symbolic butterflies and vampire wings, his follow-up to the similarly complicated character study Choke is another involving and thoughtful expression of good people at the mercy of their natures, capable of faltering, worthy of redemption. If redemption can be trusted.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
