Trust The Man

Director: Bart Freundlich
Screenwriter: Bart Freundlich
Starring: David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Billy Crudup, Dagmara Dominczyk
Running time: 103 mins
Certificate: 15

Trust The Man follows the relationship struggles of two Manhattan-dwelling couples. Tom (Duchovny) doesn't put up much of a fight against embarking on an affair with a single mother temptress (Dominczyk) as his wife Rebecca (Moore) fails to sate his addictive sexual appetite. Meanwhile, Elaine (Gyllenhaal) is coming to the end of her tether with Tobey (Crudup), her boyfriend of seven years who is showing few signs of giving in to a life of marriage and children.

Although the film vaguely follows the same path as any other romantic comedy, it does so in a refreshing, Woody Allen-esque way, presenting problems to which audiences can relate and believe in, the criticism more chiefly falling on the male side. The plot is never really the primary focus of the movie, and to an extent there's not so much an immediate storyline as a series of often on-the-ball observations about modern love and relationships, delivered with a more than respectable supply of cracking one-liners.

However, for all the good works that Trust the Man achieves, it suffers from a lack of focus. When it's dealing with the men's feelings it does so well, but then, seemingly as an attempt not to be too different after all, Freundlich slips in an unwelcome slapstick element which jars with the superior tone of the rest of the film. Punching David Duchovny in the balls is not funny. Similarly, the inexplicable change of pace and happy ending demeans what has come before it.

The ensemble cast all give credible performances, with Duchovny as ever playing himself with pleasing results and striking up good chemistry with Moore. Meanwhile, despite good performances from the other couple, their storyline tends to be the less engaging side of the film, a particular shame since Gyllenhaal could have been trusted with more than she was given.

Trust The Man is more effective when it's dealing with strife than happiness, and as such is much better at being entertaining rather than heart-warming or touching. When it aims to achieve that latter it comes across as forced and does more harm than good.

A rare creature in the current rom-com climate, Trust The Man succeeds in being refreshing for a while, but unfortunately makes too many concessions to realise its potential.