Lie Exposed: Canuck-Led Drama Buoyed by Feats of Acting… and Little Else

By Liam Lacey

Rating: C

Give degree-of-difficulty points for nerve to the creators of Lie Exposed, a drama about the power of erotic art which is not intended to incite reviewer’s sniggers but probably will. Directed by Jerry Ciccoritti and written by American actor Jeff Kober (China Beach), the film includes a passel of established Canuck actors, led by Bruce Greenwood and Leslie Hope.

Aiming for the detached, transgressive vibe of such eighties’ arthouse films as A Winter Tan or sex, lies and videotape, Lie Exposed celebrates passion at a lukewarm simmer. Greenwood plays Frank, a well-to-do Toronto man who opens an art exhibit for a group of friends and invites them to make of it what they will. The art, which can be seen via viewing slots into a black box chamber, are black-and-white art photographs of his wife Melanie’s genitals.

Melanie (Hope), a former actress, has recently returned from Los Angeles, where she went on an alcoholic bender after receiving a fatal medical diagnosis. During one drunken night, she ended up with a shaggy-haired, verbally limited hippie photographer (played by screenwriter Kober). He took the posed photos, which Melanie found emotionally healing so she decided to put on the art show with her husband’s approval.

What the images may symbolize to Melanie, in terms of shame, sexuality, and her failing body is unexplored though we do know these images have an improbably unsettling affect on the guests at the art show, in the way that a death or a divorce might have a ripple effect on a social circle.

In practice, it breaks into a series of scenes — or perhaps more accurately scene studies — in which various couples reveal their reactions to the art. Leaving the event, Frank (Benjamin Ayres) and Betty (Grace Lynn Kung) quarrel about his pornography use and the loss of intimacy in their marriage. At home in their apartment, Perry (Tony Nappo), a comic dolt, says he finds the pictures disgusting but is unnerved when his wife, Graciela (Paula Rivera) says she is moved by the photographs and the photographer.

In another apartment, Diane (Megan Follows) is visited by Tom (Kris Holden-Ried), a man who dumped her but is now ready to commit. Socially awkward Brian (David Hewlett) goes home with the vampish Mickey (Kristen Lehman) and opens up emotionally when she sets out to seduce him.

There’s some reward in watching good performers working to bring veracity to these awkward and artificial scenarios. Late in the film, Melanie solicits some emotional exposure from her husband, Frank, when she asks him:

“How do you feel right now?”

“Is this an acting exercise that we’re doing?” he responds.

The correct answer to that question would be yes. And it looks like a challenging one.

Lie Exposed. Directed by Jerry Ciccoritti and written by Jeff Kober. Starring Leslie Hope, Bruce Greenwood, Megan Follows, Kris Holden-Ried, Kristen Lehman, David Hewlett, Grace Lynn Kung, Benjamin Ayres, Paula Riviera and Tony Nappo. Opens March 6 at Toronto’s Imagine-Carlton Cinemas and in Vancouver, opens throughout the spring in other cities.