“They all wanna be writers but none of them like to read.”
In order to prevent Acheron University’s annual literary festival being cut from the budget, English Professor Simone Cleary (Kate Hudson) knows she needs to secure a big author. In desperation, she reaches out to a famous yet reclusive writer named C. R. Shriver, who wrote a brilliant novel twenty decades ago before vanishing. The invitation is mistakenly sent to a down-on-his-luck handyman, also called Shriver (Michael Shannon). Encouraged by his friend, Shriver accepts the invitation despite the fact he’s never read a book in his entire life.
Shriver is bad at pretending to be somebody else, but he’s also bad at being himself. Shriver feels like a blank page with an underlying hardship that has rendered him sans identity. All we know about him is that he has few friends, his wife left him, and he appears to be a functioning alcoholic. He’s reserved and painfully uncomfortable in almost every situation he finds himself in, but these qualities allow him to get by as the gifted, sexist author he’s pretending to be. There’s an odd choice to include Shriver’s inner thoughts through a hallucination of himself—an alter ego, if you will; one that delivers harsh judgement. Shannon is a skilled actor who can convey his inner emotions without these theatrics, but either way, there is very little character development by the end of the film.
A Little White Lie—written and directed by Michael Maren, though based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Chris Belden—comments on the sexist male author stereotype and imposter syndrome, in addition to the past and present states of the publishing world. Shriver’s book, about a character also called Shriver, has themes of “debauchery and filth and rampant infidelity and murder,” with the main character killing his wife. It’s a book with no morals, no good or evil, no God. It’s nihilistic.
At some point, Shriver steps forward, like an awkward hero, to ask feminist author Blythe Brown (Aja Naomi King) a question during her Q&A when no one else does, before asking if she’s ever considered writing from a male point-of-view. Shriver and his work are misogynistic, which makes you wonder why he and many other female fans would be so thrilled to have him at this literary festival—but just like Charles Bukowski and J. D. Salinger, there’s value in their work and their good writing, and their place in literature, though the film makes no attempt to examine this.
The film does better at tackling its central theme of imposter syndrome. Simone is a failed writer who talks about the current publishing landscape where you’re expected to build a following on social media and turn yourself into a brand in order to engage an audience, market your own work, and feel worthy of it. It’s based on how many followers you have rather than how good your writing actually is. Times have changed drastically in the twenty years since Shriver released his book, Goat Time—a violent and misogynistic work that’s still praised some decades later despite the fact that no one knows who the author is. His author picture features him in silhouette as to not be well-identified, and Goat Time was his only published work. Delta Jones (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), a writer who attends the festival every year, tells Shriver that she recognised Simone in an article she was reading about imposter syndrome in high-achieving women. Shriver himself has imposter syndrome for more literal reasons.
There’s a great cast of supporting characters in A Little White Lie, but perhaps too many. Alongside those already mentioned, there’s cake sculptor Layla (Perry Mattfeld), Professor Wasserman (Don Jonson) who rides a horse everywhere because he’s always too drunk, a journalist (Benjamin King), and another professor (M. Emmet Walsh). Many of these feature in unnecessary and inconsistent subplots that leave a lot of things unanswered. In one subplot, Blythe goes missing which introduces Detective Karpas (Jimmi Simpson) who is suspicious of Shriver, the elusive author who has written a detailed description about the murder of a wife. Does he happen to know the whereabouts of his own ex-wife?
While the plot is often messy and certain elements a little frustrating at times, the film has its moments. It’s gently-paced and somehow the dialogue, cinematography, and actors make it captivating, even when it’s verging on the bad side of boring. You will feel yourself eager to know what happens when Shriver’s con is discovered, and taken aback by the sudden romantic connection between Simone and Shriver that feels out-of-place, especially as the pair haven’t really spent that much time together and share about zero sexual or romantic chemistry.
There’s a silliness at the end of A Little White Lie that’s amusing, as the film has fun exploring the many ways in which imposter syndrome can manifest. Throughout the film, during certain panels and classes, Shriver talks about the blur between fiction and reality. In a particularly well-written scene, Shriver says that fiction is a tool humans have, which no other animal has, to create meaning of our own existence, to make sense of the actual world. The blur of fiction and reality becomes one of the film’s larger themes, especially when Zach Braff makes a miscast appearance as the “real” Shriver, but the film keeps us guessing until the end. Is anyone the real Shriver?
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