Lie With Me

There’s already been a certain amount of controversy swirling around Lie With Me, thanks to its frank depiction of the central characters’ sexual misadventures. Director Clement Virgo doesn’t shy away from portraying the raw, almost x-rated relationship between David (Eric Balfour) and Leila (Lauren Lee Smith), but comes up short in giving us a single reason to care about them. Leila is a slutty video store clerk who hooks up with David, an equally loose scumbag with a penchant for public displays of lewdness (both characters don’t seem to have any interests or hobbies outside of having sex). Admittedly, Virgo does an effective job of developing both Leila and David as emotionally damaged, thoroughly miserable individuals (David is stuck caring for his infirm father, while Leila is attempting to cope with the divorce of her parents). But there’s no story here, and that’s really the bottom line; stripped of the pointlessly explicit sex scenes and slow-motion shots of Leila wandering the streets of Toronto, Lie With Me would barely qualify as a short. The self-conscious, painfully pretentious voice-over narration by Smith certainly doesn’t help matters, and just adds to the distinct feeling of needless artiness (ie “I wish I could ride my bike forever. I wish the sun would never go down”). The bottom line is that it’s virtually impossible to discern just what Virgo’s attempting to do here; if his goal was to create an annoying, 21st century variation on 9 1/2 Weeks, he’s undoubtedly succeeded.

* out of ****