The Bed You Sleep In

Ray and Jean are sitting and reading a letter from their daughter Tracy, who has recently left home. In the letter Tracy accuses her father of abusing her sexually when she was a child. The parents' world is smashed into pieces and turns into a tragedy of Greek proportions. Did Ray abuse his daughter or not? Not even Jon Jost takes sides.

COMMENTARY
Trust is an irrational and naive condition. You know what kind of demons and liars that hide within each human being. This is the message which has been proclaimed by hundreds of Hollywood productions over the last five years.
At first, on the surface, The Bed You Sleep In appears to claim the same thing. Jon Jost tells of the dark powers below the surface in a small suburb in northern America. How nothing can be taken for granted: the saw-mill may close down tomorrow. The nice work-mate beats up his wife. The quiet, sympathetic protagonist Ray may have sexually abused his own daughter, but on the other hand it may also be the unhappy one's false accusation, a fantasy.
But on the other hand the film clearly states that we don't have a choice: it is simply impossible to live without this impossible trust. It is the foundation not only of love and marriage but of all human relationships. According to Jost the movie is about a world (the US) built on lies, and
how those lies tear society apart from within.
Jost himself doesn't know who tells the truth in his movie, and he shies away from the idea of a scapegoat, common to classical drama. He gives us everything he knows. The saw-mill and the river: Ray's life. The home, the neighbour and the streets: his wife Jean's. Their faces, their strength, their weaknesses, but not their secrets. Jost has Antonioni's eye for showing how people inter-act with their environment: the saw-mill and the lunch-nick are not set-pieces but worlds in their own right, as secretive as people.
When the daughter's letter is finally read out, her straightforward, emotionally charged words cut like a knife through Jost's closed images, and through the audience's hearts. That written piece of paper in itself (we never get to meet the daughter) exposes the inner essence of incest better than a thousand portrayals of crying children and sick fathers. It is trust which in one single stab has been deadly hurt. And when it dies, the human being dies with it. ':'
Kerstin Gezelius

Medverkande
Tom Blair, Ellen McLaughlin: Producent
Henry S. Rosenthal: Manus
Jon Jost: Foto
Jon Jost: Musik
Erlmy Wold: Talat språk
English