Taglines: What took her family years to build, a stranger stole in an instant.
Trust is a psychological thriller film directed by David Schwimmer and based on a screenplay by Andy Bellin and Robert Festinger. It stars Clive Owen, Catherine Keener, and Liana Liberato. The film is about a teenage girl who becomes a victim of sexual abuse when she befriends a man on the Internet.
A suburban family is torn apart when 14-year-old Annie (Liana Liberato) meets her first boyfriend online. After months of communicating via online chat and phone, Annie discovers her friend is not who he originally claimed to be. Shocked into disbelief, her parents (Clive Owen and Catherine Keener) are shattered by their daughter’s actions and struggle to support her as she comes to terms with what has happened to her once innocent life.
14-year-old Annie Cameron lives in suburban Chicago. She enjoys a healthy relationship with her family. On her birthday, her parents give her a laptop. She is rather naive in respect of some of the ways in which the Internet can be harmful. When she meets Charlie in an online chat room, she establishes an instant connection with him. At first, Charlie states that he is sixteen years old.
Over time, as the two bond by sending phone text messages and through instant messaging, he bumps his age up to 20, then 25. Annie is taken aback at first, but then dismisses these concerns. Her parents are not aware of her infatuation, or the threat Charlie poses, and Annie even deceives them a bit, as she continues the on-line relationship, not wanting to end things with him because she is flattered by the attention. After three months of communicating electronically, Charlie invites Annie to meet him at the mall.
While her parents are delivering Annie’s brother to his first semester at college, and taking the orientation tour, Annie goes to the mall and awaits her first face-to-face meeting with Charlie. When he appears, she discovers he is significantly older than he presented himself to be, appearing to be in his late thirties or early forties.
Annie is upset about him having lied about his age, but still spends time with him after he compliments and sweet-talks her and convinces her to ignore their age difference, even to the point of driving to a motel with him. Despite the fact that Annie is a minor, Charlie has her model lingerie and proceeds to inappropriately touch her. He soon coaxes her onto the bed and they have consensual, but statutory sex. He secretly films what he does to Annie.
A few days pass, and Annie becomes frantic at not hearing from Charlie. Her behavior changes towards all around her. At school, Brittany, Annie’s best friend, deduces Annie had sex, as she had seen her and Charlie that day at the mall. Brittany is concerned about this and notifies the school administration.
The police arrive and depart with Annie, drawing unwanted attention from fellow students at her high school. These actions initiate an FBI investigation. The FBI have Annie contact Charlie, in an attempt to identify him, but he figures out the ruse and breaks off contact with her before the FBI can trace his location. Annie’s father, Will, starts his own obsessive investigation, taking up the services of a private investigation firm in New Jersey. He even steals a collection of his daughter’s chat conversations with Charlie from the FBI.
His relationship with his daughter and his wife Lynn begins to deteriorate, and he questions his work at an advertising firm, which uses provocative advertisements involving teenagers. When Will tells his boss that his daughter was sexually assaulted, his boss is shocked but becomes dismissive when told that Annie knew the man and went willingly to the hotel, saying “it could have been a lot worse.”
Trust
Directed by: David Schwimmer
Starring: Clive Owen, Liana Liberato, Catherine Keener, Thomas McCarthy, Viola Davis, Noah Emmerich
Screenplay by: Andy Bellin
Production Design by: Michael Shaw
Cinematography by: Andrzej Sekula
Film Editing by: Douglas Crise
Costume Design by: Ellen Lutter
Set Decoration by: James V. Kent
Art Direction by: Kerry Sanders
Music by: Nathan Larson
MPAA Rating: R for disturbing material involving the rape of a teen, language, sexual content and some violence.
Studio: Millenium Films
Release Date: April 1, 2011
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