'The Truth': Sensitive new age man meets plain-Jane
By Jane Freebury
JAKARTA (JP): From an empty beach at midday the camera drifts to a seaside suburb and the solitary pedestrian striding along the pavement. She has a knapsack on her back, black stockings on her legs, and Doc Martens on her feet, and is clothed in the nondescript apparel of someone who wants to escape notice.
This short, stocky figure is on her way to work. It is Dr. Abby Barnes (played by Janeane Garofalo), a veterinary doctor who hosts a radio talk show dispensing advice to pet owners on how to deal with fish that have stopped swimming, with cats that won't stop licking, or dogs that won't keep still to have their photo taken. You've got it. Sometimes she deals with whackos, but one day a caller named Brian rings in. He doesn't own a pet, but has a problem with one.
Brian (played by British actor Ben Chaplin) is a photographer who has an assignment with a hound called Hank, but Hank is rolling around on skates (Yes!) and having too much fun to cooperate. Desperate, Brian calls in to Abby's talk show for some of her pithy advice. Instructed to get down on all fours, stretch out a "paw" and fondle the tips of Hank's ears, he discovers that this works instantly. Hank becomes a model subject. Brian is so impressed by Abby's persuasive talk show persona, and so captivated with her wit and warmth, that he caves in to initial resistance to her suggestion -- and takes Hank home as his pet. Next day he rings the doctor and requests a meeting with her.
What does she look like so he will recognize her? Instantly Abby loses her composure. Well, she's a whip-thin 5'10" tall and blonde, she says, actually describing someone her very opposite, like the Nordic snow-princess Noelle (Uma Thurman), a model,who lives next-door in her apartment block.
From this point on the plot turns on the device of mistaken identity, as Brian keeps thinking that the Noelle Slusarsky he meets is the Abby Barnes he has fallen in love with over the radio waves. He stops going out on assignments just to stay home and listen to her timbre of her voice and the wit of her brisk observations. Still Abby just can't get herself to confront Brian with the truth -- that she's a personality girl and not a stunner.
Noelle, who is just as scared about being seeming stupid as Abby is scared about being confronted with her plainness, begins to take a fancy to this charming and sensitive Brit with his 'snaggish' ways. He treats her as an intelligent being, unlike Roy, the boyfriend manager who yells at her, and took his 15 percent cut away with her confidence.
What prevents Noelle having a relationship with Brian is her friendship with Abby. Sisterly enough, though one of the film's little implausibilities is that a scatty type like Noelle -- who is incredulous when asked what she thinks about something -- could be a companion to Abby -- who plays violin and could cope with reading a book of Simone de Beauvoir's letters to Jean-Paul Sartre. Abby is more the mentor here. The relationship is more like mother-daughter than sister to sister.
Despite its critique of the cult of physical beauty, an uncomfortable truth about The Truth About Cats and Dogs is that it still invites the viewer to judge Abby's looks and compare her with her friend. But beauteous Noelle is no man-eater but a sweet and awkward girl, who is also living on her own, gets mixed up with the wrong sort of man, and is a prisoner to her beauty just as Abby is imprisoned by a self-image that denies the attractiveness of her nice brown eyes and her big smile.
In The Truth Thurman seems to step aside to allow Garofalo the floor. Thurman, who will be better known to Jakarta audiences from Pulp Fiction (as the vamp) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (as goddess Venus), has top billing but it is Janeane Garofalo's film. Even in the photographic session with both women in Brian's studio apartment, the skillful direction of Michael Lehmann is able to use the camera eye to find the beauty in Garofalo, beside the more obviously photogenic Thurman.
Despite a less than glorious directorial career of late (Airheads, Hudson Hawk), Lehmann's handling of his actors and his material is intelligent and adroit. Some scenes are particularly well managed -- such as the night of intimacy over the phone between Brian and Abby -- and overall the tone is light and the touch is sure. Lots of big closeups throughout ensure identification, but the film sidesteps sentimentality.
The only unsympathetic character in this film is token macho male Roy, not unlike the husband in that other memorable female buddy movie, Thelma and Louise. With the sole exception of boyfriend Roy (Who is incidentally allergic to cats. He will therefore never be enlightened!) all of the men around, including Abby's talk show producer and assistant, are supportive of women.
Go with a girlfriend to see The Truth About Cats and Dogs. As much as I wanted to like other recent women's films How to Make an American Quilt and Waiting to Exhale, I couldn't find the spirit and generosity of this little film in either.
The Truth About Cats and Dogs could have gone further, it could have pulled out the stops and developed into a more extravagant comedy, after the style of a Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn vehicle like Howard Hawks' screwball classic Bringing up Baby. Seeing a desirable hunk like Grant duped by a smart and sassy Hepburn is an illicit pleasure for the female audience of screwball comedy. But Brian was probably safe from being taught a lesson because he had already earned his sensitive new age credentials long before he rang up for the doctor's help.