UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH

DISCOVERY:
 I sought out this film due to the strength of Simple Men, by Hal Hartley.

 OPENING SCENE:
A lone man dressed in black is hitch-hiking alongside a parkway. Is he a priest? He has but a tote bag with the tools of his trade. He is determined to get back home. He is shunned by those he helps. Why? His name is Josh. Josh Hutton. And he wants to know about George Washington.

The Unbelievable Truth is about Vic Hugo, a garage owner with a wife and daughter, living on the south shore of Long Island NY. How does Vic feel about his daughter posing half nude?

Josh Hutton just got out of prison. He is near 33 years old. His goals? He wants to a) get back home, b) get a job and c) get laid. He is a simple man with understanding of complex machines. He has no understanding of the complexities of women. He is content with his work. He is content with his home.

Is the unbelievable truth that he is innocent of the crime he supposedly committed, and served so many years for? Or is it that he is a thirty-three-year-old heterosexual male virgin?

This is a coming-of-age film for the character, Audry, a teenage high school dropout who is too smart for her own good. She is obsessed with nuclear Armageddon. She sheds her long-time shallow boyfriend and makes a play for a mysterious stranger whom some call a mass murderer. She is steered into a career in modeling by her garage-owning father. Her relationship with him is established through a series of deals. He wants her to go to community college and study communications. She would rather go to Harvard and study literature. The plot is not straight-forward, it is interwoven with subplots.

Our heroine grows in this film.

An all-white, heterosexual cast of characters.

In this film the men are victims.

FINALE:
The whole mess and morass is straightened out in the last ten minutes of the film in a wonderful finale.

Adrienne Shelly has a tête à tête with Robert Burke

Country: USA   90:00 min.   1990   Color
Language: English

Directed by: Hal Hartley 
Written by: Hal Hartley 

Cast:
Adrienne Shelly	....	Audry Hugo
Robert John Burke	....	Josh Hutton
Chris Cooke	....	Vic Hugo
Julia McNeal	....	Pearl
Katherine Mayfield	....	Liz Hugo
Gary Sauer	....	Emmet
Mark Bailey	....	Mike
David Healy	....	Todd Whitbread
Matt Malloy	....	Otis (Driver/Bum)
Edie Falco	....	Jane (The Waitress)
Jeff Howard	....	Irate driver
Kelly Reichardt	....	His Wife
Ross Turner	....	Their Son
Paul Schultze	....	Bill
Mike Brady	....	Bob

 Credits  courtesy of The Internet Movie Database.

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