The Frame

Canadian director Atom Egoyan sort of has a niche in high-concept, eroticized thrillers, and this one fits in there pretty well. Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon play two performers/best friends in 1950s Hollywood whose friendship dissolves after the death of a young actress which may or may not have been a murder in which either Firth or Bacon or both may or may not be involved. Confused yet? Alison Lohman plays an author who is trying to write a biography of one of them (I forget which) and ends up playing the detective role as she tries to discover the truth behind the girl’s death. The film is made up of a series of flashbacks told from all three characters’ points of view, showing how memory and/or deception make it almost impossible to discover what actually happened to the doomed actress. That part is intriguing, and the mystery is well-done. The erotic parts fit less well and are rather distracting, I think, from the actual story. Not to mention the fact that they make thinking about Lohman playing the adolescent lead in the recent Flicka (which was made AFTER Where the Truth Lies) distinctly uncomfortable.
Above Average