REVIEW: In Trust Everything Isn’t Black or White
An up and coming art gallery owner in New York City, Brooke (Victoria Justice) is hoping her gallery’s upcoming opening, which will be showcasing the work of young artist, Ansgar (Lucien Laviscount), will finally put her on the map. Brooke’s husband, Owen (Matthew Daddario), a newscaster in the city, is all ready for the opening to be over so he can finally have his wife back. But as the pair draw closer to the gallery’s opening night, temptation, in the form of Ansgar and graduate student, Amy (Katherine McNamara), flirts its way into the eyes of the husband and wife, leading to some unexpected results.
Based on Lazarian’s play Push, the plot, at first glance, seems pretty predictable. Husband/wife jealous of spouse’s new co-worker begin to develop trust issues in the relationship. Viewers have seen the story played out a number of times on screen, but in director Brian DeCubellis’ story, there are a few twists along the way that throw a wrench into this particular plot. However, these twists instead of propelling the story along, ultimately leave the viewer with a lot more questions than answers. The story becomes so focused on the “grey area” that it quickly glosses over why the two have trust issues with one another rather than really delving in and crafting the reasons.
This “grey area”, as described above, is an area where the viewer are given a number of reasons and evidence as to what could hae been the reasons for why Brook and Owen are both in the wrong and right. It’s the part of the film where DeCubellis spends the most time, specifying all of the moments of lapse the characters took that lead them to make the decisions that they did. No matter has realistic as this could scenario might have been, there is no build up to the climatic. There is nothing that the viewers can look back on and say, “Well this all makes sense. It was a moment of weakness”. Everything is rushed for the sake of focusing on the what could have been reasons.
Justice and Daddario are reuniting in this movie after first starring together in 2015’s Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List and this is definitely one of the more adult projects we have seen from both of them. Justice and Daddario were good choices as our leads, but didn’t make for a convincing couple. Maybe it was because their characters spend most of the time doubting one another, but they didn’t seem believable to me.
They are joined by Daddario’s former Shadowhunters costar, McNamara, who I enjoyed watching play the not so nice girl. Though, it would have been nice to see a more fleshed out Amy. McNamara did well with what she had to work with, but you never fully grasp what is pushing Amy to do the things she is doing. Laviscount’s performance as Ansgar will leave you torn on whether or not to cheer for him because of how dreamy he is in this movie.
It makes sense why all the actors opted to take on a role in this movie. It’s mature, sexy, and different than any previous project they had done before. However, the material is not that great and the actors are all under utilized. If viewers are looking for some time to pass during the day then feel free to turn this on. However, there is no need to rush to theaters or buy on VOD.
Grade: C