Where the Truth Lies

Colour, 35 mm
Canada, United Kingdom, USA, 2005, 107 min
Section: Horizons
Oficiální stránky: www.serendipitypoint.com/wttl/frameset.asp

Synopsis

At the end of the fifties, Lanny Morris and Vince Collins were the most popular comedians in America, watched by millions of television viewers. One day they went their separate ways, but neither ever achieved the success they had previously enjoyed as a team. Fifteen years later, a young ambitious journalists decides to find out why they split up their act. She discovers that it somehow involved a dead woman in a hotel room. When the journalist digs into the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death, she gradually realizes that the truth is far more complicated than she had at first imagined. Indeed, her investigation unleashes events that she soon cannot control. The film comprises two generically different parts: the first deals with the two beloved comics’ performances, the ‘faces’ they reveal to the media, which differ greatly from their private appearances. The second, rather conventional part is something of a psychothriller, following the progress of the investigation. The film was screened in competition at this year’s Cannes festival.

About the director

Atom Egoyan (b. 1960, Cairo) is of Armenian origin but grew up in Canada. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1982. He has been involved in theatre and has shot several short films. World acclaim came with the films Family Viewing (1987), Speaking Parts (1989) and The Adjuster (1991), which were awarded at a number of festivals. He contributed a segment to the film Montréal vu par... (1992); Calendar (1993) takes up his relationship to Armenia; and Exotica (1994) focuses on the fascination with ambiguity. Then followed The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and Felicia’s Journey (1999). The central characters in his films are often white-collar workers standing outside the plot but drawn into it through curiosity and the circumstances of their own lives; this is true of the customs officer in Ararat (2002). Egoyan also directs for the theatre (recently Wagner’s The Valkyrie for the Canadian Opera Company).