At the center of the film is the relationship between two entertainers, Vince Collins. played by Colin Firth, and Lanny Morris, portrayed by Kevin Bacon. They work as a comedy team and we meet them as they star in a telethon. One may think of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, although this duo is distinctly fictional. Morris is ruthless in the way he treats women. Conquest is the game, and then to hell with them. Collins is more of an enigma.

The plot is built around a mystery. A naked blonde named Maureen (Rachel Blanchard) is found dead in a bathtub. What happened? Who’s responsible? In “Where the Truth Lies” we are led into the morass by means of a narration by another woman, Karen, played by Alison Lohman. She is a reporter with a goal—writing a book about Collins. That gambit adds journalistic and ethical ingredients into the mix.

There was a fuss about the film’s rating, which has led to no rating at all. The rating board wanted to tack on the stringent N-17, a virtual guarantee of box office death, and there is a suspicion that homosexual sex dealt with in the film was the no-no to an R. I’ve long been an opponent of the rating system, and here is a history of the raters finding violence less of a problem than sex. Lenny Bruce once said that films can show a naked breast as long as there’s blood on it. Movies have come a long way since then, but one can usually count on the board to be more unjustifiably squeamish about some matters than others.