White Lie (Calvin Thomas and Yonah Lewis, 2019)

White Lie is almost intolerable. It creates a scenario of fundamental tension -- a liar and grifter continually on the verge of being discovered -- and slowly, methodically turns the screws, showing the walls closing in. We've seen this before. But there are a few things that set White Lie apart, giving it more emotional resonance than we know what to do with. Katie (Kacey Rohl) is a dance student barely scratching out a living, and she has been supporting herself with an unconscionable scam. She shaved her head, told people she had terminal cancer, and posted a GoFundMe page so friends could provide financial support for her expensive "experimental treatments."

This is a preposterous premise, except that it's not. Thomas and Lewis understand that we are living in shameless times, and a lot of people have no trouble convincing themselves that whatever it is they are doing is not so bad. They would just waste the money anyway. This makes them feel good. They have money and I don't, so why is that fair? and so on. Katie's lie is the stuff of embarrassment comedy -- Larry David feigning an infirmity to get out of some social obligation, or SCTV's Guy Caballero using an unnecessary wheelchair "for respect." But White Lie dramatizes it with the cold, forensic brutality of Michael Haneke or David Cronenberg.

As it happens, this wasn't just a bad idea that got out of hand. In a key scene between Katie and her father (Martin Donovan), we see this young woman through the eyes of someone who knows exactly how desperate and damaged she is. Like a Trumpian, Katie won't fess up when confronted with the truth. She gets defensive, layering lie upon lie, certain she can simply generate an alternate reality in which she is the victim, not the offender. The primary complication in this current scam is that Katie has a devoted girlfriend, Jennifer (Amber Anderson) from a family of means, and she will do anything to take care of Katie.

This is why the deception starts to crack. Katie seems to feel guilty about lying to Jennifer, and she knows that the relationship is doomed should her secret come out. But it's not that simple. Katie is a manipulator and a narcissist, and she isn't "redeemed" by her feelings for Jennifer so much as she's confused and inconvenienced by them. Katie insists that Jennifer is the only good thing in her life, but we see her struggling with what that really means. Is Katie capable of loving someone else? 

Like a classic film noir conundrum, love is the weakness that will ruin everything, and so it remains at least partly unrecognizable. If anything, Katie takes self-lacerating pleasure in the messiness, the thrill ride of being chased by falsehoods. White Lie spins this frantic struggle into a kind of Theater of the Absurd. Just because you want the bomb to go off doesn't make the countdown any less tense.