Too Tricky To Be True

AMAZON PRIME VIDEO — THE LIE — 2018

A strange and in many ways shocking film. The main teenage girl in this film is fifteen. She is the daughter of divorced parents, and that division creates in her a case of divided allegiance, and this makes her no longer sure of what is truth and what is lying. Her teenage girlfriend is the same age or so. She is the daughter of a live-alone Pakistani hence Muslim — we assume — father. The Pakistani girl decides to organize with her American girlfriend a bizarre scenario in which the Pakistani girl disappears for a couple of days so that she can go see her boyfriend and actually do a little bit more than just see — we assume. For a Muslim girl, it is absolutely forbidden. The trick works — a little too well.

When the Muslim girl reappears, when the American girl is obliged to tell the truth, the real tragedy has taken place. The American mother, in a sort of psychological competition with her ex-husband, just plainly runs the Muslim Pakistani father over and kills him. A ridiculous competition between the two American parents. An outrageous decision to kill the Muslim father, because he is Pakistani (the police are rather gross about it), or he is a Muslim, or just plainly a non-Caucasian person, neglecting the fact that he is speaking Urdu like most people in Pakistan, and Urdu is an Indo-European language. More…