This is one of those hyper-contemporary problems that arises, confuses, causes arguments and Internet bickering, . There is a film that many people have seen at advance screenings, called Catfish. It revolves around two brothers and a friend, all filmmakers, who begin to document Nev's, one of the brothers, online relationship. The girl is the sister of one of those child art stars, with whom the brother began an online correspondance on Facebook. Again, it's a contemporary problem: at this point, many of us have spoken on the phone to someone we've never met aside from the Internet. So goes the story. The filmmakers, based in New York, make their bread by filming dance performances. On one of these trips they wind up relatively close to the girl's midwest home, and they decide to drop in, armed with a couple of video cameras to document the whole thing. However, for one reason or another suspicion arises that the girl is either lying, not real, or a combination of the two.

They arrive in the town to find out that the address to which Nev's been sending correspondance still has his letters in the mailbox. The story unravels from there. What's very interesting is that the twist is that there is no twist. And then there is the problem of the genuineness of the film. With the new Joaquin Phoenix movie causing buzz, is Catfish just riding that confusion-in-film wave? Is it a marketing ploy? People have brought this issue up at screenings, confronting the filmmakers, who deny that it is anything but a documentary. They claim that they'd be amazing actors if it was in any way staged. The confusion spreads wide over the Internet, but all of the evidence is conjecture. What if it is staged in some way though? It would be quite a manipulation by the filmmakers, one that could make a great deal of people who saw the movie very, very angry. Because the crux of the movie is about human trust, breaking down the barriers of lies, and confronting reality. My first thought after seeing it was, "This film is a great dissection of what happens when you get caught in a lie." Which isn't to say I don't love a good hoax: Andy Kaufman and his ilk are some of the most heroic figures in American entertainment history, questioning reality and media. But this film tugs on the heartstrings a little too hard to reneg that trust.

If it is all a documentary and nothing is staged, then the story is a neat one, and Nev is a very brave person. He confronts the liar, but he confronts her with empathy. He breaks down the walls that the liar constructed and in the end it seems like he helps her mental state extensively. He is an interesting therapist, completely untrained, yet somehow understanding of a specific type of human condition. The film becomes very raw, and somewhat excruciating in the way that dark films sometimes thrive. There is a certain poetry that the film takes that documentaries sometimes take, a satifying conclusion, and a moral lesson: lies can get out of control. Perhaps Nev and the other filmmakers have let a lie get out of control with this film. I guess I'm not sure what to think, which is why I was apprehensive to even write a review. I'd hate to be one of the duped. We all do.