Buried secrets, showbiz scandals, a dead starlet in a hotel room – no wonder enterprising journalist Karen O’Connor (played by Alison Lohman) wants to dig up the old story of a famous comedy act that went sour.
It’s the 1970s, and she’s looking back 15 years, to when Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth) broke up after a long career as a TV and nightclub duo. As Karen interviews the men to get their story, she discovers more sordid information than she suspected, and maybe even begins to uncover the truth.
This is “Where the Truth Lies,” a curious film based on a novel by Rupert Holmes. It’s weak on the murder-mystery side, but strong on sleazy showbiz characters.
Any pretense that Lanny and Vince are not at least partly inspired by Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin is damaged in the opening sequence, a flashback to the late 1950s and the duo’s appearance at a fundraising telethon, which strongly resembles the Muscular Dystrophy telethons Lewis has run for many years.
The specific mystery story of the film is presumably fictional. At least I hope so. Because the film is directed by Atom Egoyan (“The Sweet Hereafter”), a postmodern filmmaker with a dubious attitude about the truth, we are treated to different versions of the story about the dead starlet. Perhaps it’s supposed to unfold like “Citizen Kane,” as a reporter hears conflicting tales while trying to get to the meaning of “Rosebud.”
Karen is a rather dippy heroine, a journalist with no apparent ethical concerns about how she gets her story. Lohman (“White Oleander”) is a very good young actress, but she can’t make sense of her character.
| “Where the Truth Lies” HH
Muddled: A journalist in the 1970s tries to piece together the facts around the breakup of a famous comedy team (Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth) and the death of a starlet in their hotel room many years before. A muddled effort from director Atom Egoyan. Rated: NC-17 rating is for nudity, violence, language. Now showing: Varsity. |
The film flips from the Eisenhower-era heyday of Lanny and Vince to the 1970s. Neither Bacon nor Firth is terribly convincing as a comedy star; it would take a much different actor than Bacon to summon up the demonic comic energy of a Jerry Lewis.
However, they’re both good in the 1970s sections. Bacon is superb as a lofty, aging rake, his ascot tied around his neck and his pompadour crystallized in place. Firth is equally convincing as the dissipated older Vince – in his mustache and turtlenecks, he looks like a ’70s-era Robert Goulet.
A combination of male nudity and kinky sexual proclivities has earned “Where the Truth Lies” an NC-17 rating. But, like most of Atom Egoyan’s films, it’s about ideas, not sensation. In this case, the ideas are somewhat hard to get at.
Oddly enough, Jerry Lewis has a new book out this week on his partnership with Dean Martin. I wonder whether that will reveal where the truth lies, or just be another version of showbiz mythology.
Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth star in “Where the Truth Lies.”
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