Lie with Me (2005 film)

A young woman masturbates to a pornographic film. She gets up abruptly and goes out to a party, looking for sex. Leila has learned she has some power over men with sex but feels a part of her is still untouched, holding back, despite her assertiveness. Before she can choose a partner for the night, she is corralled by David, into a bathroom, while his girlfriend calls through the door. She leaves, but keeps her eye on David as she picks up a shy man, with whom she has sex against a fence outside as David watches from his car while his girlfriend, Victoria, fellates him. Leila is in complete control of her encounter while David remains completely passive.

He then sees her walking down the street and follows her. She smiles but does not speak to him and breaks into a run, leading him to a playground. They crouch inside a small tunnel and watch each other as she begins to touch herself. This time, however, he leaves.

Leila visits her parents and learns that her mother is leaving her father and selling her childhood home. Her father is devastated, staying stoned and refusing to do anything while her mother clears out the house. Leila's best friend, Rachel, is getting ready to be married, but confesses that she has had sex with an old boyfriend recently, despite her insistence that she loves her fiance and is ready to settle down. Leila is skeptical but supportive, and Rachel laughs when she turns on the VCR and discovers the porn tape Leila was watching; Leila tells her nothing about David.

When Leila sees David again, they finally speak to each other, and he takes her home, where they have sex. He asks Leila if she will go out with him on a real date, giving her his number when she leaves.

They finally do go out and begin a real romance. She meets his father, who is physically fragile but very funny, teasing her about having sex and making noise in their apartment. David cares very tenderly for his father, who is charmingly brusque. Leila is still skittish, although she is not intimidated when David's ex-girlfriend, Victoria, confronts her at her job, warning her that David has intimacy issues. When they go back to the club again, Leila dances suggestively with a couple of men while watching David's reaction, and he is hurt and angry when they return to his place. She brushes off his fears when he confesses that he thinks of nothing but her, that he needs her, but she acts like it is all a game. He begs to her to promise that she will not leave him, and she does, but does not believe it herself.

When David finds his father dead, he turns to Leila for consolation, but she does not know how to comfort him. This leads to conflict and ends with him asking her to leave. He later reconsiders, but he is unable to find Leila again, as he knows nothing about her except her first name. Leila finds her sexual experiences more and more unsatisfying and becomes increasingly frustrated. She picks up the shy man again, but strikes at him in anger when he is unable to follow her peremptory commands, and throws him out of her apartment in disgust.

Leila spends time with her parents as they go their separate ways and gets ready for the wedding while the summer is coming to an end. As she rides her bicycle to the ceremony, David sees her and follows in his truck. He waits outside the synagogue and approaches her as everyone floods out onto the sidewalk following the wedding, and then Rachel grabs Leila's hand and she calls out to David, to ask if he is coming. At the reception, David watches Leila dance with an old man, but she runs away again when he approaches her. This time he follows her all the way home, and all the way inside, telling her he will not leave her again. They reunite and the two engage in a passionate kiss.

Lauren Lee Smith said that when she got a call from her agent on the requirements for the role of Leila, which clearly included not only nudity but on-camera live sex, she thought he was kidding. Then she read the script and recognized its origins. Clement Virgo asked her to audition with Eric Balfour, whom he'd interviewed in Los Angeles. Virgo got them into a room to see the chemistry between them because he knew that without chemistry they had no movie. "There was apparently chemistry," Smith later affirmed, giving a giddy laugh.^[2]