2010 American film
Trust (stylized as trust_) is a 2010 American drama thriller film directed by David Schwimmer and written by Andy Bellin and Robert Festinger, based on an uncredited story by Schwimmer. Starring Clive Owen, Catherine Keener, Jason Clarke, Liana Liberato, and Viola Davis, the film follows a fourteen-year-old girl who becomes a victim of sexual abuse after meeting a man posing as a teenage boy on an online chat room.
Trust premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2010, and was theatrically released in the United States on April 1, 2011. Despite underperforming commercially, the film received positive reviews, with Liberato's performance earning critical praise. Liberato won the Silver Hugo Award for Best Actress at the Chicago International Film Festival, and Schwimmer was nominated for the Grand Special Prize at the Deauville American Film Festival.
Plot
Annie Cameron is gifted a laptop from her parents, Will and Lynn, for her fourteenth birthday. She meets a boy online named Charlie, who initially claims to be 16 years old, but later confesses that he is actually 20, and eventually 25. Though disconcerted by his dishonesty at first, Annie comes to believe that the two of them are in love. After two months of communicating electronically, Charlie invites Annie to meet him at the mall. Upon arriving, she discovers that he is actually in his late thirties. Though she is distraught, Charlie convinces her to accompany him to a motel, where he makes her wear lingerie he bought her and rapes her, filming the ordeal.
The next day, Charlie fails to return any of Annie's calls or texts, upsetting and confusing her. Annie's best friend Brittany confronts her, having seen her with Charlie at the mall. When Annie confesses that she and Charlie had sex, but dismisses Brittany's concerns, Brittany notifies the school administration. Police arrive and depart with Annie, drawing attention from other students.
After Annie's parents learn what happened, an investigation begins, led by FBI agent Doug Tate. The FBI have Annie call Charlie in an attempt to identify him, but he figures out the ruse and blocks her number before they can trace his location. Will hires a private investigation firm from New Jersey to catch Charlie, but this proves fruitless when they realize Charlie masks his IP address so that his location appears as the Czech Republic. As he becomes obsessed with catching Charlie, Will's relationship with his family becomes strained, and he starts having nightmares of Annie being raped, and questioning his work at an advertising firm, which often uses provocative images of teenagers. Annie begins seeing hospital counselor Gail Friedman, with whom she confides that she loves Charlie and believes he loves her too. When Annie returns to school, Brittany tries to apologize, but Annie orders Brittany to never speak to her again.
DNA evidence proves that Charlie has previously sexually abused several other pre-teen girls. After seeing pictures of Charlie's other victims, Annie flees her home and seeks consolation from Friedman, breaking down in tears as she finally admits to herself that she was raped.
Hoping to regain a sense of normalcy and fall back into a routine, Annie participates in a school volleyball game. Will sees a father in the crowd taking pictures of the girls, whom he mistakes for one of the men from the registered sex offender list and violently confronts. Though the assaulted man declines to press charges, a humiliated Annie lashes out at Will at home, insisting that he is ruining her life.
Annie learns from Brittany that other students have been ridiculing her online, photoshopping her into pornographic images and exposing her cellphone number and address. She rushes home and attempts suicide by overdosing on pills. After a panicked phone call from Lynn, Will finds Annie in the bathtub and forces her to vomit. Brittany spends the night to keep Annie company, mending their friendship.
Annie wakes up and finds her father sitting outside in the freezing cold. Will admits that he blames himself for failing to protect her and pleads for her forgiveness, though he believes he does not deserve it. Annie tearfully embraces him.
During a post-credits scene, it is revealed that "Charlie" is actually a high school physics teacher named Graham Weston, with a wife and young son.
Production
In an interview Schwimmer stated that he always wanted Annie to be played by a 14-year-old, as "there is a danger, if you cast someone who is 18, 19 or 20 to play 14 or 15, that very subtly, almost unconsciously, the audience is, 'Oh, this isn't so bad.'" He based the film on 14 years of involvement with The Rape Foundation and seven years of research. The scene where Annie is raped was filmed as late as possible, to ensure a "really safe environment for Liana." In the seven years of development, about 50 drafts of the script were written.[4]
Reception
Box office
Out of its $4 million budget, Trust earned only $120,016 in North America and $475,423 internationally, for a worldwide gross of $595,439.[6][7]
Critical response
Trust received positive reviews from critics. As of June 2020[update], the film holds a 79% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 66 reviews with an average rating of 6.7 out of 10. The critical consensus states: "Director David Schwimmer gets some gut-wrenching performances out of his actors but he still lacks the chops to fully ratchet up story tension."[8] The film also has a score of 60 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 18 critics indicating mixed or average reviews.[9]
In his review, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four and stated: "The bravest thing about David Schwimmer's 'Trust' is that it doesn't try to simplify. It tells its story of a 14-year-old girl and a predatory pedophile as a series of repercussions in which rape is only the first, and possibly not the worst, tragedy to strike its naive and vulnerable victim. It's easy to imagine how this story could have been exploited and dumbed down. It works instead with intelligence and sympathy."[10]
