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Conceived as a scornful peak into the lives of the
idle rich and infamous as spoiled young works-in-progress,
Lying is so pointless as to in effect defeat whatever purpose
it originally had in mind. First time writer/director M.
Blash opts for f launting impulsively artsy attitude over
engaging storytelling, and an array of either thoroughly
dislikable or senseless, undercooked characters. Chloe Sevigny
is Megan, a young woman and professed orphan who seems to
have the run of a swanky McMansion country estate, spotless
in the extreme and without a servant in sight. She's invited
a trio of females up to the house, to frolic daily when
not helping her make a movie on the grounds for about an
hour. They include two relative strangers she hires as interns,
patrician girlfriends played by Jena Malone and Halley Wegryn
Gross, and a comparatively older woman (Maya Goldsmith)
who is a casual aquaintance Megan befriended at her yoga
class back in the city. Also flitting in and out of the
narrative on occasion, is Leelee Sobieski as Sarah, yet
another barely out of her teens solitary female presiding
over a patrician household about a half mile away. As the
story, such as it is, unfolds, we learn intermittently between
overly extended vignettes of filthy rich slacker downtime,
that Chloe is an impulsive liar for lying's sake, at one
point assuming the identity of her lonely neighbor Sarah
without explanation. Likewise without explanation, is the
disemobodied singing voice of a woman that taunts them around
the McMansion one night as they play dressup in Megan's
presumably dead mother's clothes. Though the actual taunting
is more a case of the director teasing the audience with
a pretend morphing into a conventional ghost story where
all these silly and shallow wo men might perhaps meet their
demise, no such luck. When these fragmented purposeless
interludes finally move along to the film within a film,
we are treated to Chloe's conception of a dramatic short
features on her back lawn. Over which are spread scores
of identical naked black baby dolls being handed basketfuls
of Twinkies and other junk food snacks, by these health
conscious women dressed up in safari outfits. Presumably
as commentary about unappetizing imperialist generosity
in Africa, get it.
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