White Lie Review

White Lie is a drama that has been well received by critics and was selected as one of the Top Ten Canadian Films at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival.

Katie Arneson (Kacey Rohl) is a university student who has been faking she has cancer. Even her girlfriend, Jenn (Amber Anderson) believes she’s ill. Katie faces a challenge when the university demands her medical records so can apply for a scholarship and she has to go through extraordinary lengths to maintain the lie.

We have all heard of horror stories about people faking illness to either gain sympathy or money and White Lie taps into this. White Lie was a character study about how someone who fakes serious illness. In Katie’s case, she wanted both the money and the attention she received. A telling statement Katie made was that she hated her life before she got ‘cancer.’ It shows that it was not just about the money for Katie.

White Lie showed the amount of effort Katie had to go through to maintain the lie. At the beginning of the film, Kate was shown shaving her head, takes pills, and made avoids eating too much. Katie had to keep track of all her lies to ensure she wasn’t caught out. Katie also had luck on her side because people she knew weren’t aware of how chemotherapy works because she stated that she was going once a week and a doctor tells her that people have a three-week break between sections.

The key to White Lie was Rohl’s performance. Rohl was best known for doing TV roles – she has had recurring roles in shows like The Killing, Hannibal, and Arrow. White Lie was a great showcase for Rohl’s talents. As Katie, Rohl had to be cunning and resourceful to maintain the lie and was desperate when things go wrong. Despite the fact, Katie was a fraudster you will oddly be routing her. That’s what the best con-artists can do, they lure you in and make them feel sympathy for them. Rohl and the writer/director team, Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas were able to pull off an amazing trick.

One of the reasons why we can be compelled by Katie’s situation was because due to the challenges she faced. She has to enter into a shady world and work with shady people. Despite her aim being to make money from a crowdfunding site, she had to spend thousands on getting documents and buying silence. Whilst Katie was willing to take money from strangers, she was reluctant to take any from her girlfriend. Yet Katie keeps sinking deeper and deeper.

White Lie also explores Katie’s relationships with her girlfriend and her father (Martin Donovan.) As already mentioned, Katie refused to take money from her girlfriend, but she still lies and has to prevent Jenn from going to any chemo appointments. The more telling relationship was the one with Katie’s father because he was the only person who saw through her lies because of an event at high school. He had to do some tough love actions.

The film explores the theme of social media and validation. Katie was constantly posted on Facebook, Instagram, and her crowdfunding page. It’s relatable to anyone who uses social media, especially as a promotional tool because you would need to post every day to keep attention. Due to Katie’s dependence on social media one bad post could derail her campaign and she could become an international pariah.

White Lie was a well-made, small scale drama due to its excellent character work. It will appeal to fans of independent cinema.