MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Unbelievable Truth’: Two Loners Challenge Conformity

Hal Hartley’s “The Unbelievable Truth” (at the Nuart) stakes a claim in that territory about equidistant between Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise” and Steven Soderbergh’s “sex, lies, and videotape.” This is to say that Hartley brings to blue-collar types something of the oh-so-fashionable air of disaffection that Jarmusch brings to marginal people and Soderbergh to yuppies. He hasn’t Jarmusch’s sense of style or Soderbergh’s solid craftsmanship--to put it kindly--but he has a quirky minimalist sense of humor. “The Unbelievable Truth” is deceptively slight on the surface, so arrhythmic that its disjointed pacing must be intentional (you hope). But as an antic romantic comedy it’s fresh and actually gets somewhere.

Like James Spader in “sex, lies, and videotape,” Robert J. Burke’s Josh Hutton is the somewhat mysterious new guy in town, the town being a modest, pleasant middle-class community on Long Island. Only Josh isn’t exactly a newcomer, yet he might as well be since he’s been in prison for quite a spell for crimes that nobody can quite remember accurately. He’s a real loner, finally landing a job with a volatile mechanic (Christopher Cooke). The mechanic’s pretty daughter Audrey (Adrienne Shelly) is convinced that a nuclear holocaust is imminent but in the meantime is persuaded to embark on a modeling career in Manhattan that is to pay for a Harvard education she really doesn’t want.

Hartley makes sense of the fact that, although kindred spirits in their ability to think for themselves and their unwillingness to accept things at face value, Josh and Audrey take the entire picture to get together. (The tall, chiseled Burke with an intense blue-eyed gaze and the bright, pouty Shelly are both distinctive presences.) They are mired in a dull, conventional society where everyone pretty much conforms without reflection--and with considerable boredom. (No matter that most of these people can sometimes be amusing in their lack of self-awareness; their lives aren’t very much fun for themselves.)

Underneath a surface of goofy shenanigans, Hartley reveals a serious concern for how people tend to look at relationships as if they were business deals and how alienating the results are. Long after the film’s chic off-the-wall humor has faded in memory you may find yourself recalling Audrey’s telling remark: “People are only as good as the deals they make and keep.”

‘THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH’

A Miramax release. Executive producer Jerome Brownstein. Producer Bruce Weiss. Co-producer writer-director-editor Hal Hartley. Cinematographer Michael Spiller. Music Jim Coleman. Production designer Carla Gerona. With Robert J. Burke, Adrienne Shelly, Christopher Cooke, Julia McNeal, Mark Bailey, Gary Sauer.

Running time: 1 hour, 29 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (some sex, strong language, adult themes).