[box cover]

Tell Me No Lies

Important things you should know about Tell Me No Lies, directed by Emmanuel Itier and available on DVD from Artisan Home Entertainment:

  • Tell Me No Lies is an "erotic thriller." This is clear because the DVD packaging features a picture of a half-naked woman rubbing her behind against a giant knife.
  • Tell Me No Lies stars Amber Smith, announced in the press materials as "Maxim Cover Girl Amber Smith." She has appeared as an actress in L.A. Confidential and American Beauty as well as on television on Friends and Just Shoot Me and Red Shoe Diaries 7: Burning Up.
  • In his biography on this DVD, director Itier says "Directing will always be a work of mad passion."
  • Twice in Tell Me No Lies Maxim Cover Girl Amber Smith writhes erotically in a hot tub during protracted musical interludes.
  • Regardless of the situation, all the women in Tell Me No Lies dress like they work at Hooters.
  • Tell Me No Lies contains six fleshy sex scenes, each of which is belief-defyingly boring.
  • Tell Me No Lies is set in Santa Barbara, Calif., yet the police detective character wears a big cowboy hat.
  • The big-cowboy-hat-wearing police detective character in Tell Me No Lies awkwardly quotes Shakespeare.
  • Tell Me No Lies contains the following dialogue, spoken without irony: "The inmates are running the asylum!" "Rome really wasn't built in a day, was it?"
  • Maxim Cover Girl Amber Smith plays a character who works as a DJ in a radio station. This radio station also employs a slightly creepy geeky but ultimately harmless and eventually murdered sound engineer and a token black fellow DJ named Pepper who says things like "A'ight?" and "Bee-otch!"
  • Maxim Cover Girl Amber Smith does not make a very convincing DJ.
  • During one not very interesting scene of expository dialogue the camera slowly pans down Maxim Cover Girl Amber Smith's long, scantily clad body and then slowly pans back up.
  • Maxim Cover Girl Amber Smith has a housemate who makes aggressive lesbian advances toward Maxim Cover Girl Amber Smith which Maxim Cover Girl Amber Smith eventually succumbs to in Belief-defyingly Boring Sex Scene #4.
  • Maxim Cover Girl Amber Smith's lesbian housemate is never seen fully clothed and even though Maxim Cover Girl Amber Smith herself wears very little in the way of clothing she always comments about the lack of clothes being worn by her lesbian housemate as if it is out of the ordinary.
  • While recounting the events of the first 32 minutes to her aggressive lesbian housemate, Maxim Cover Girl Amber Smith says without irony "The whole thing sounds like a really bad movie."
  • Tell Me No Lies' leading male character once says about croissants: "I love these fucking things!" Later in the scene he quotes Shakespeare.
  • Maxim Cover Girl Amber Smith frequently displays her bare breasts. On these bare breasts she has several large moles, two of which are very large and instead of making the viewer think of sex they make the viewer think of skin cancer. Also, these two particular large moles are symmetrically placed, one on each breast. At times they eerily resemble extra nipples.
  • There is one scene in Tell Me No Lies in which we are misdirected into believing that Maxim Cover Girl Amber Smith has been murdered by a mysterious stalker/killer. But it is only a brief moment of relief.
  • As the mysterious stalker/killer explains his twisted motives in the obligatory mysterious-stalker/killer-explains-his-twisted-motives scene, he does so with scenery-chewing gusto and refers to his derelict father as "Pops."
  • Two characters receive point-blank gunshots to the chest and yet continue to fight each other athletically and unimpaired.
  • As Maxim Cover Girl Amber Smith mercilessly beats the mysterious stalker/killer with a baseball bat he giggles maniacally.
  • In the short Special Features segment of "behind the scenes interviews," director Itier wears a T-shirt emblazoned with the word "pornstar."
  • The DVD transfer of Tell Me No Lies appears to be full-frame. The DVD packaging of Tell Me No Lies features these contradictory statements: "Formatted from its original version to fit your screen" and "Presented in the original 1.33:1 format of its original theatrical exhibition." Conclusion: This matter is not worth investigating.
  • Audio is available in both Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby 2.0 Surround.
  • This DVD also includes behind-the-scenes interviews and a trailer.
  • Keep case.


—Gregory P. Dorr

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