Seep Sok (Nady Meas) needs a new home in Providence R.I.
“Trusting Beatrice”
Digs Funny, Like a Crab
by Jamie Jobb
Screenwriters try to “make it happen” -- set up their story and all the promise of its premise -- in the first ten pages of the script, which translates into the first ten minutes of the film. Playwrights, on the other hand, are told to make their magic happen in the first fifteen minutes of their play ... thus indicating a stage audience’s greater patience, induced no doubt by greater monetary stakes in a night out at the theater vs. a night out at the movies.
Either artform, the writer has a short time to get the audience hooked.
In “Trusting Beatrice”, an outstandingly obscure independent film by playwright Cindy Lou Johnson, this is what happens in the first ten minutes:
A young, impressionistic French woman, Beatrice de Lucio (Irene Jacob), pulls a wagon with her five-year-old Cambodian companion, Seep Sok (Nady Meas). They are searching Providence, Rhode Island for a room to rent. Finally they find one in a very large house.
Across town, a small-time landscaper with big-time ambitions, Claude Dewey (Mark Evan Jacobs) digs a large hole for a small tree -- while his Boss (Leonardo Cimino) observes ...
Boss: “You dig funny. Sideways, like a crab.”
Back at the office, Claude learns his live-in girlfriend, Emily (Katherine Hiler) has started a new shift at the photo lab where she works, meaning she’s now home in the daytime while he’s working. Meanwhile his boss, “The most paranoid man on the planet”, gives Claude $5,000 cash to deposit.
On the way to the bank, Claude stops by his house only to find Emily in bed with a stranger. Dazed and confused, Claude leaves, forgetting to deposit the $5,000. He later returns home to confront Emily, who “confesses” ...
Emily: “It’s not my fault, Claude. It’s you; you’re not happy. What am I supposed to do, living with an unhappy man?”
She demonstrated by pointing out Claude’s unsmiling face on several photos of them together. Emily leaves and Claude goes to the kitchen sink to burn his “unhappy” pictures.
Meanwhile, a Wilderness Girl (Kerin Ann McDermott) is at the door selling cookies. Distracted and angry, Claude answers the door. He yells at the girl, then begins to cry. Claude realizes his callous mistake, and apologizes to the girl.
Claude: “Have you ever had a very bad day? I just had a very bad day; it had nothing to do with you.”
However, the Wilderness Girl notices something amiss in the kitchen.
Wilderness Girl: “Mister … Fire!”
His kitchen is aflame. Quickly he grabs the girl and runs outside. As Claude watches his home go up in smoke, he is arrested for “grand larceny” -- for failing to deposit the $5,000 his boss gave him. After being bailed out by his family, Claude has to put up with his Mother (Charlotte Moore) ranting in the car.
Mother: “Larceny!?! We have never had a larcenist in our home. Never! And if that’s not enough, poor Emily called me in tears. Tears! What in God’s name did you do to that poor girl? She said you’re not happy, she said she had to leave you because you’re not happy. Is that why you embezzled and larcened, because she left you? You know she never would have left if you would just be happy. That’s all you had to do is … just be happy.”
In court, Claude’s boss drops larceny charges and Claude is released from jail, only to be immediately fired because, as his boss reiterates another more civil complaint …
Boss: “You know you can’t even dig right. There is only one correct way to dig and you don’t dig that way … You dig your own way, which is the wrong way (to the Judge) He digs completely the wrong way. Sideways, like a crab!”
After leaving court, Claude is again arrested -- this time for arson. Again his Mother is ranting as she drives him home from jail.
Mother: “You burned your house down!?! I’ve never heard of anyone burning his own house down! Is this because Emily left you? You know she’s such a nice girl, and so understanding. I’m sure that if you just called her and said that you’re sorry and that from now on you’ll be happy … Why can’t you be happy? Look at your father and I, we haven’t been happy in years … and we’re happy!”
Dejected, out of work, homeless, unhappy -- Claude meets Beatrice and Seep in the ashes of the house … and thus beings their modern screwball romance.
Gems like “Trusting Beatrice” (also known as “Claude”) are made with love and care by independent filmmakers. Cindy Lou Johnson, the playwright who directed and wrote this film, has a breezy writing style that is rooted in screwball comedy classics and continues that tradition set in motion by writer-directors Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder.
Johnson (“The Years” “Brilliant Traces”) writes poignantly funny plays about women on the verge of marriage, one way or the other, although Beatrice isn’t about to get married in this film. An NEA playwriting fellow, Johnson also has tv writing credits for a series on the California Gold Rush and HBO’s “Vietnam Stories”.
Now that we know how “Trusting Beatrice” starts, let’s look at the whole picture below in a short review. Note that the top one-third of this review involves the first ten minutes, which shows how much important exposition happens during that time.
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“Trusting Beatrice”
The Short Review
“Trusting Beatrice” aka “Claude” (1992) -Written and directed by Cindy Lou Johnson. "Why can’t you be happy? Look at your father and I, we haven’t been happy in years ... and we're happy!" Providence, Rhode Island landscaper Claude Dewey (Mark Evan Jacobs) has good reason to be glum. He works for the “most paranoid man on the planet" who thinks Claude digs "funny, like a crab".
Certainly Claude is "having a very bad day": He discovers girlfriend in bed with another man, so she suddenly leaves him. When he ignites their snapshots in kitchen sink, he also burns down their apartment house. Then he's arrested for grand larceny, loses his job, only to get arrested again for arson. And after all that, his mother (Charlotte Moore) still laments: "Now you've brought home a topless French woman and a foreign child!"
The woman, Beatrice De Lucio (Irene Jacob), may mangle her English but she knows she's "an illegal stranger" and "a refugee from justice" who's convinced she always says and does "the wrong thing". Also, Beatrice doesn't "feel like I’m in my body", believes she's "not crying for the rest of my life" and knows "The minute I tried to kill him, he decides he wants to live!"
Furthermore, she's lost her green card while homeless and caring for mute five-year-old Seep Sok (Nady Meas) who hasn't spoken since her family died in Cambodia's "killing fields".
“You can always marry her. However, considering this knife thing, I'd be awful careful not to irritate her." In first turn behind camera, playwright Cindy Lou Johnson peppers her delightful script with unanswerable questions: "Where are you now in relationship to your body?" and "How do you shoot your toe if you're serious about suicide?"
"Someone who thinks I'm ‘translucent’ gets advice from an 'avocado' and is 'on the sheep' is going to make a very strange simultaneous translator." (USA)
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Finding “Trusting Beatrice” will be a chore for most everyone. We could find no clips from it on line, nor could we find any DVD sources for this film, now 25 years old. It is available in VHS format on Amazon:
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