Lies We Tell

A trust­ed dri­ver, a dead rich white man, his mis­tress with a tra­di­tion­al­ist Mus­lim fam­i­ly and her pan­tomim­ic ​“gang­ster” cousin-cum-ex-hus­band: it’s not a Jere­my Kyle line-up, just the char­ac­ters who fill out a grat­ing, corny series of events in this fal­ter­ing first-time fea­ture. A sto­ry of loy­al­ty, betray­al and pride is sti­fled in Mitu Misra’s debut fea­ture Lies We Tell, which bites off far more than it can chew.

The wannabe thriller is buzz­word heavy and promis­es high stakes and dev­as­tat­ing dra­mat­ic results. In real­i­ty, it’s laden with ham­my tropes and misog­y­nis­tic (com­i­cal, but not deter­mined­ly self-aware) the­atrics that just make you wince. Is it real­ly accept­able to call some­one ​“bitch” repeat­ed­ly with­out a hint of irony?

It doesn’t feel like unac­cept­able stereo­types are being mocked or exposed, rather just being allowed to exist in the sad, bliss­ful­ly igno­rant real­i­ty in this film. The music doesn’t help either, as the seem­ing par­o­dy of Doc­tor Zhiva­go​’s theme is just a reminder that imi­ta­tion might be the sin­cer­est form of flat­tery, but that doesn’t always mean it’s any good.

The title pro­vides a warn­ing of the myr­i­ad of gener­ic stereo­types to fol­low, offer­ing lit­tle in the way of orig­i­nal or remote­ly enjoy­able con­tent. A heav­i­ly melo­dra­mat­ic tone makes it even more unlike­able with flim­sy, so-bad-they-might-be-fun­ny characters.

Lies We Tell insists on its iden­ti­ty as a British thriller, in the hope of achiev­ing a sim­i­lar lega­cy to the crime clas­sic Get Carter or Mike Fig­gis’ intense noir, Stormy Mon­day. But here, the city of Brad­ford is just bor­ing. With­out any believ­able per­for­mances or a trace of authen­tic­i­ty in anyone’s con­vic­tions, this film feels like a mock­u­men­tary some­one from Lon­don might make about the dan­gers of walk­ing alone home at night in ​“the North”.