LoveTrue

In TRUELOVE, director Alma Har'el goes to Hawaii, New York City, and Alaska to find three compelling stories of life and love in which betrayal and hard knocks challenge her real-life characters. A Hawaiian coconut seller named Willie learns the son he's raising was fathered by another man. 17-year-old Victory, part of a seven-kid family singing group in New York City, struggles to understand why her mother left her father, a man who beat and cheated on the mom. Blake, a young Alaskan woman who was taunted and bullied as a child, turns to stripping to bolster her self esteem and worries that she'll never be able to extract herself from that life. The director hires actors to portray her subjects at different stages of their lives to help illustrate their stories. Blake, still recovering from the bullying, is shown as a child in dramatic re-enactments of her traumas. Willie, betrayed by the mother of his child, is shown as a carefree youth. Thalia Boyd, a woman who left her abusive and unfaithful husband and their seven kids, is played by an actress in a re-creation of the moment the husband explained that his mistress would become part of the family, whether the wife liked it or not. The stories abruptly cut into each other and go back and forth in time.