Starring Jimi Petulla, who also writes and produces the film, Trust in Love is currently undertaking a theatrical roadshow alongside a VOD release.
Directed by Mick Davis, this film is a two-fold story. It’s about Mickey (Petulla), a record producer who finds his perfect marriage is not all that great.
It’s also about his son Cody (Logan Arditty), who is struggling with his own identity and artistic flair.
Whether it wants to be a family drama, a queer affirmation story, or a gross-out comedy is unclear, but Petulla’s film, a semi-autobiographical piece, is never less than watchable.
Mickey is the kind of music supremo who still has the haircut and the attiude of half a century ago. He’s excited that a member of The Doors is in his recording studio but dismisses modern beats as ‘noise’,
He also lives his life as if he were single, neglecting his younger wife Sofia (Natasha Wilson) and their teenage children in favour of the lure of the production desk.
Cody, meanwhile, dreams of and draws pictures of a classmate and feels conflicted with his own sexuality while dealing with his mum’s affair and his dad’s curious affinity with outsiders, notably a friendly drag queen.
Uncle Bobby (Tim Hazelip) is a surfing dude, dreadlocks and all, while Sofia and her vacuous ladies who lunch friends are sketched as flimsily as possible, Women are disposable in this industry.
While on the surface this sounds like the plot of several Hallmark films mixed together, it does present a quirky picture of a Malibu family dragged apart by the dollar and the inevitable boredom it causes when you can have everything.
I really liked Arditty’s performance as Cody, although his character arc is rather predictable, leading to a resolution that ties us most loose ends by the closing credits.
What is missing, though, is any sense of sibling support between Cody and Jennifer (Sydney Bullock). We do get a positive scene between the reticent son and accepting dad.
Perhaps as Trust in Love is more Mickey’s story than Cody’s – despite the initial narration coming from the sun – we never see the daughter’s perspective except in one scene about ‘bring cool’.
Sofia cries a lot and seems easily led, with a much more rounded take on family life coming from Hazelip’s beach bum.
The cameos are fun. We know to expect a blink and you miss it bit from the elderly Roddy Krieger, but the weirdo therapist fits an unbilled Eric Roberts well.
His inclusion adds a sense of additional oddness to proceedings, as his curio collection of clients are masked up to hide their identities in group therapy.
This is a film which has ambition but without quite having the courage to follow its storylines through.
We get a sense of Petulla’s anger with his own situation, but what happened before the catalyst for the wife to say, ‘enough’? Why does it matter for the new band to gel with old hands?
I would have either ramped up the odd scenes with various lawyers or cut them all together, while Miljenko Matijevic as Emerson, an old rocker finding it rough to adapt, has the potential to grow.
For more about Trust in Love, visit the film’s website.
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