No Lies-All Lies

No Lies presented itself as an actual interview of a girl that tells all about an incident of being raped. The actress is very convincing with her portrayl of being a rape victim and the cameraman accomplishes his part of playing the curious director. It is not hard to imagine that John Cassavettes films had a major influence on this particular piece. It is very difficult to distinguish the difference between fact and fiction while watching, but by the end of the piece, it looked, sounded, and felt real, but was in fact coherced and a filmmaker from NYU was able to deceive the spectator by manipulating a documentary form in order to present a situation from a realist perspective. However, look at how she is able to do it. The film opens to two friends that are trying to think of something to film for the project. The scene presents itself as just a simple conversation between the friends and the cameraman even goes as far as to announce that "it's Cinema Verite". The spectator is now led to beleive that this is real. After some heckling by the camerman, the actress finally starts to slowly let on that she was recently raped. It is a situation that the spectator is not going to deny happened, maybe because of its degree of seriousness. Then, the camerman begins to basically harass the actress on why she did so little to let it be known. It is a fact that a majority of rape victims try to keep the incident quiet. Another element conviently included for the sake of authenticity. So now the piece looks as though it was just something shot between two friends and what they are talking about is just a coincedence. But the most convincing element is the title, No Lies. It is must have been great passing this piece off as something that really happened, all the while, exploiting a serious and disturbing issue that most anyone would not deny happened.