This is the film that first introduced me to my favorite director, Hal Hartley, as well as my
favorite actor, Martin Donovan (also my boyfriend in an alternate universe.) The folowing synopisis
was taken from Hartleys "Trouble and Desire" website here.
Maria (Adrienne Shelly), a pregnant and accidentally patricidal schoolgirl at war with her newly widowed mother, enters into a friendship, based on mutual need for supportiveness rather than sexual attraction, with Matthew (Martin Donovan), a saturnine electronics technician constantly abused by his father. Tracing its heroine's progress from brat to saint, "Trust" is a melodrama-- involving assault, a baby kidnapping, an abortion, a Machiavellian mom, a drinking duel, a fistfight, an unexploded hand grenade, and a lover's leap -- that couldn't be less Sirkian in its droll, unflappable analysis of family violence and the moral courage it takes to defeat it and assume faith in others.
