White Lie (film)


White Lie is a 2019 Canadian drama film written and directed by Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas. The film stars Kacey Rohl as Katie Arneson, a university student who fakes a cancer diagnosis for the attention and financial gain, but gets caught up in having to maintain her lie.
It premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, and had its international premiere at the 24th Busan International Film Festival.

Plot

Katie Arneson has been faking her cancer diagnosis for some time now. She pops placebos, shaves her head and starves herself to appear more sickly to those watching. And there are a lot of people watching. Katie is a small-time campus celebrity who uses her fraudulent diagnosis for both emotional and financial gain, raising money through crowdfunding campaigns, while collecting friends, supporters and an unsuspecting girlfriend, Jennifer Ellis.
Katie learns a university bursary she has been counting on is in jeopardy unless she can provide proof of her illness in the form of medical records by the end of the week. She enlists the help of a medical resident, Dr. Jabari Jordan, to forge the documents, but struggles to produce the $2,000 he demands without raising suspicion. Reduced to desperate measures, Katie contacts her estranged father in search of the required money. He sees through her façade and refuses to help, pleading with his daughter to come clean publicly. With nowhere else to turn, Katie asks Jennifer, who agrees without hesitation, but is unable to withdraw it in full from the bank on such short notice. Presented with only a portion of the amount he was promised, Jordan withholds the forged documents Katie urgently needs until she can pay the remainder.
The following morning, when Katie returns to the clinic with the outstanding cash in hand, Jordan is nowhere to be found. Ever persistent and resourceful, Katie deceives his supervisor into handing over the medical records. After successfully submitting the falsified documents to the university, Katie breathes a sigh of relief; until she receives a notification that her father has written a tell-all post on Facebook, exposing her crime.
In a frantic effort to contest the accusations, Katie descends into a spiral of misguided decisions that further entrench her deceit. With support from her community quickly fading, and determined to salvage her relationship with Jennifer, Katie overlooks an opportunity to come clean, and instead continues to betray and manipulate her devoted partner. Convinced yet again of Katie's lie, Jennifer stands by her girlfriend's side and helps her map out a plan to regain the public's confidence.

Cast

Production

and Calvin Thomas began developing a film about a woman faking cancer for personal gain in 2012. "For the first time, we had a story based upon a character and not the other way around. We always envisioned it as a fast-paced procedural rather than a drama," they explained in an interview with Playback. Lewis and Thomas spent several years considering possible narrative structures for the film, including the "rise and fall" of standard biopics. The first draft was written in 2015 and compressed the story into a five-day timeline. "We had to find a balance of not telling too much and telling just enough that you have enough insight into what happened over the past couple months of her life," said Thomas. Films from the Romanian New Wave, including 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, influenced the plotting.
The duo worked again with producer Karen Harnisch, who had recently brought the Canadian independent film Sleeping Giant to the Cannes Film Festival, and was able to help them secure a larger budget. “It was an aspiration for all of us to create a really polished film that graduated us from the mumblecore-y microbudget world,” Harnisch told The Globe and Mail.
The film was shot in Toronto and Hamilton under the working title Baldy. Principal photography began on November 14, 2018 and was completed one month later on December 14.

Reception

Critical response

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on 11 reviews, and an average rating of 8.62/10. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 6 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
The Globe and Mails Carly Lewis awarded the film four out of four stars and described it as "an incredible feat of showcasing the complicated scramble that is being alive." Adding that White Lie "unfurls to become an unexpected empathy inquest." NOW Magazines Norman Wilner called the film "a character piece that plays like a thriller."
Calum Marsh praised the film's direction in a piece for Maclean's on the best Canadian films at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, writing "The directors calibrate the tension perfectly, and without moralizing indict an age in which, thanks to the internet and social media, the line between public and private lives has blurred, and we are all trying our best to keep up appearances." The Hollywood Reporter's Stephen Dalton echoed the sentiment, stating, "Driven by nuanced, persuasive performances and shot with an urgent, jittery tension, White Lie is a compelling close-up character study of a recklessly needy anti-heroine caught in an impossible dilemma of her own making."

Awards

In December 2019, the film was named to TIFF's annual year-end Canada's Top Ten list.
AwardDate of ceremonyCategoryRecipient and nomineeResult
Vancouver Film Critics CircleJanuary 6, 2020Best Screenplay for a Canadian FilmYonah Lewis, Calvin Thomas
Vancouver Film Critics CircleJanuary 6, 2020Best Actress in a Canadian FilmKacey Rohl
Vancouver Film Critics CircleJanuary 6, 2020Best Supporting Actress in a Canadian FilmAmber Anderson
Miami Film FestivalMarch 23, 2020Rene Rodriguez Critics AwardYonah Lewis, Calvin Thomas
Canadian Screen AwardsMay 28, 2020Best Motion PictureKaren Harnisch, Yonah Lewis, Calvin Thomas, Katie Bird Nolan, Lindsay Tapscott
Canadian Screen AwardsMay 28, 2020Best DirectorYonah Lewis, Calvin Thomas
Canadian Screen AwardsMay 28, 2020Best ActressKacey Rohl
Canadian Screen AwardsMay 28, 2020Best Original ScreenplayYonah Lewis, Calvin Thomas