True/Perspectives

I enjoyed this one. Stylistically, some of the same symbols were present in True as Lola: the phone, screaming (with or without reason), voice-over narration, the complications of love/relationships, running, the sense of being/seeing an individual surrounded by a city of people.

I love the questions at work here. Is she really breaking up with him? Is their relationship growing, staying, or dying? How did they get to here from there? Is it bad, is it good, what makes it bad or good?

Like Lola, True plays tricks with perspectives. Lola is a play on the "what if"/domino effect--if this happens, then this will happen, then this... True works with fewer dominoes but with an even more personal effect. Thomas thinks, for a few moments, that his love is leaving him, and it influences his reflections on their relationship up to that point. Would he have thought differently about their past if Francine's lines had been focused on a different theme? I wonder what the ramifications of this tiny event will be, now that Thomas has had a moment in which he's thought of his life with her, all the points that have led them to the present. Interestingly he doesn't go through all the bad points, all the reasons she could be leaving him, but instead starts from the beginning and bounces from cause to effect. Her screaming, finding the Conservatory, their budding and growing relationship, the bumps along the way. It's not an emotional breakdown, but a pained, retrospective walk through the past. What keeps people together? Love? The perception of love?

The "truth" is another point I'm having trouble really finding a sticking point to in this one. Does Thomas finally realize the truth when he "sees" Francine at the end, when her lines have forced him to see their relationship clearly?