The Four Faced Liar

So I saw this movie because Netflix recommened it and I'm so weak-willed. Damn you, Netflix! If it has those little film festival olive branches on it's movie poster, odds are I'll watch that movie. This one had four! The premise about four college aged New Yorkers and how their relationships are altered after they meet at a bar, aptly named the Four Faced Liar. There are two couples and their lesbian friend and by the end of the movie there is a new couple out of the five and the other two have dissolved. In the first minutes of the movie, I realized the audience for this movie was very small; namely, urban twenty-something students - of which, I am not.

The movie is about relationships and following your heart versus your head? I'm not quite sure where the accolades for this movie came from. The characters are almost dynamic but end up only having that one unique layer to them and fail to be two-dimensional. The relationships don't make a whole lot of sense nor do the motivations of the characters. A self-proclaimed anti-monogamous character suddenly wants nothing but monogamy? A reserved character with a need for approval suddenly dives head first into controversy? The characters were just too under-developed to make their actions completely genuine. Perhaps there were too many characters. Honestly, one of the couples could've been removed completely and the story would have probably worked better. The dialogue was witty in some parts and was almost very perceptive, almost. It was as if the movie couldn't decided if it wanted to advance the plot or focus on the satirical idioms from the characters. I can see how this would be a better movie if I was able to relate to the characters in some way.

The cinematography and sound mixing does a nice little job considering the budget. The lenses are clear and the camera movements smooth. The post production side of the movie was polished. I will say that the pivotal New Year's Eve bar scene was edited perfectly with great fast/slow time warps on the clips with awesome jump cuts to keep the pace up and then the mirroring of the two situations going on inside and outside of the bathroom with the slow-mo climax was pure brilliance.

The actors did a pretty good job. They were one level up what I would've expected from this low budget of a movie. That being said, they were a little bit stiff and over delivered some of the lines but it wasn't terrible.

In the end, it wasn't terrible but it wasn't relatable either. It doesn't seem like it can really appeal to anyone other than it's target audience."Look at modern literature; all of the greatest female characters were written by women because no man could ever write from a female's perspective. Women have this compassionate chemistry that allows them to listen with an unbiased ear. All women, even you."