What you say can be less important than how you say it, which puts "Truth" at a big disadvantage. Yes, honesty and frankness go well together. There are only so many ways to say things like "I'm gay" and the best way might be the most straightforward (no pun intended). That obviousness doesn't always work for good filmmaking, though, which is true for "Truth". Part gay romance, part psycho-thriller, "Truth" struggles on many levels, some of which could be forgivable if writer and director Rob Moretti didn't rest his film's tension on patent dialogue and exhibitionist horror.
Take the first meeting between the film's lovers: Caleb, a young hottie (played by adult film star Sean Paul Lockhart), and Moretti's silver-fox, Sean, get together for a cup of Joe. They sit across from each other on the cafe's couch with the ease of two actors in a toothpaste commercial, pretending not to know they're pretty and confident. As the camera annoyingly cuts back and forth between their faces, Sean asks Caleb why he's shaking, even though he's not, while Caleb says totally unbelievable things like "No one has ever called me beautiful before". It's like a soft core porno without the sex (the film's actual sex scenes are a smidgen less forced, as obsessed with waxed bodies and Lockhart's abs as they may be).
At any rate, the two fall in love. Night after night they fill Caleb's big house with candlelight and the scariest-please-cover-your-ears thing of all: endless pillow talk. Caleb opens up about his abuse at the hands of his psychotic, alcoholic mother, and Sean licks his pup's emotional wounds as best as he can. They're happy together. Unfortunately, when Caleb learns that Sean is a married dad-to-be in the closet, it brings out the many mental, pill-gobbling, and violent skeletons in his own. No bunnies are cooked, but Moretti puts Caleb at the head of a sadomasochistic-imprisonment that leaves Sean cuffed to a bed with a pink baby-bib around his neck reading "Daddy's Girl".
Strangely, the warped shift in tone, which tortures Sean for not being honest with himself and Caleb, feels like another cover-up itself. Moretti is clearly interested in the disastrous impact of childhood abuse and sexual shame. Somewhere, beneath the cheese, you can even sense a tenderness in "Truth", a desire to face the scars of terrible pasts. But Moretti's flagrant approach to personal disclosure and abuse is oddly alienating. Caleb's character does a jarring 360 and yet when he does, the film feels as coy as ever.
There are some nice touches in "Truth". Lockhart, who struggles to make Caleb's initial sheepishness not look like a form of foreplay, has some solid moments nonetheless, including when Caleb and Sean get into a fight. As he yells, an unexpected gravel enters Lockhart's voice and for a second, Caleb seems like an actual character instead of a diorama of a gay twink. Also, where can I get a pair of the skeleton gloves that Caleb dons? They are quietly cool and ominous, a trinket of the black humor in "Truth" that Moretti might have more tightly embraced.
Let's not forget Suzanne Didonna either, who, as Caleb's hateful mother, gives an over-the-top performance that makes "Truth" feel as unhinged as it's elsewhere pretending to be. She's among the details in the film that seem to scrape at something important, and the one that comes the closest to clutching that something. Her crazy racket is extremely uncomfortable to sit through yet ensnaring, like a train wreck. After she speaks, you're as unsure, uneasy, and piqued as ever, which is funny, given those are some of the things that people feel when the you-know-what comes out.
