Split across time periods, voiceovers and protagonists, Atom Egoyan's new film doesn't give up much in the way of resolution. Its opening scene establishes a doubled focus on a Lewis-and-Martin-style comedy duo, Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth), as they appear both on a stage and on a TV monitor, the video grain increasingly prominent in a close-up of the screen. "There'll be no next time," sings Lanny, staggering through the last moments of their annual polio telethon. This "last time" fades into a slow tracking shot through a luxurious hotel room, into a bathroom with grand gold fittings. As the lush orchestral score swells, the camera looks down into the tub to reveal a body, a girl seemingly drowned, pale, grotesque and grim. This, the title hints, is Where the Truth Lies. Except it isn't.

Adapted from Rupert Holmes' novel, Truth is less concerned with who killed Maureen (Rachel Blanchard) in the 1950s than with how the murder broke up the comedy team. Or to put it more poetically, the focus here is the impulse to investigation, here embodied by young journalist Karen (Alison Lohman), whose 1972 pursuit of "truth" creates and unravels a mystery of identity, loyalty and betrayal. She first appears applying lipstick in her car, feeling, as her voiceover puts it, "a desperate need to prove myself." To that end, she interviews Vince, who's immediately worried about her salacious or sensationalist intentions. Having read her previous articles, he observes, "It's funny how you're really in them a lot." The camera is close on her round, inscrutable face, hoop earrings marking her self-conscious stylishness. "I try to present a balanced view of my subjects," she says. "I leave the conclusions to my readers."

This being an Egoyan movie, her intentions mean little, except as they indicate her weakness and delusion. "It would be your words," she assures Vince, though, as the film goes on to show, words only bear meaning in context, and show business is all about deceit. Plot turns will reveal Karen's early infatuation with Lanny — she had polio as a child and appeared on that last telethon, where she was moved by his earnest words and tears, which she thought were meant for her — as well as the complications of Lanny and Vince's partnership.

Karen reads Lanny's account of the breakup, listens to Vince's, and further investigates by way of interviews (Maureen's mother, the boys' manager). Yet the truth remains elusive. Her stumbling involves deceptions as well: During a chance meeting with Lanny, she pretends to be her best friend, a second grade teacher, impresses him with her apparent intelligence and spends a night with him, learning too late that he is not he man of her childhood dreams, but, as her friend puts it, "a pig." This even after she has been reading his manuscript, providing the film with yet another voiceover, Lanny's cocky, self-loving perspective.

The movie's doubled points of departure, desire and deception are used with subtlety as well as something like blunt force. Early on, Vince responds to an audience member's taunting with a vicious backroom beating. Shortly after, Lanny describes their partnership as "essentially a boy-girl act. I was the tramp, ready for any sort of action, and Vince was the gentleman, always trying to make me behave myself. I was pleasure, and he was control. I was rock and roll and he was class. His presence gave America permission to like me." Indeed, the film uses their duality to examine showbiz, its manifest artifice as much as its perversions of authenticity. The perpetually adolescent boys engage in fights, booze and drugs, and certainly have all sorts of sex, including three-ways. During the sex scenes, most often shot with bright lights to show their pale, much-exposed skin and awkward efforts to perform, the boys also reveal themselves as insecure and controlling, their anonymous, energetic conquests feebly defining their masculinity.

It is, reportedly, these sex scenes that earned Where the Truth Lies trouble with the MPAA, leading to its release without a rating and so, presumably, a smaller likely audience. It's not as if Egoyan's movies have ever been huge, but this censure appears to have more to do with the unromantic, even clinical presentation of acts than their particular explicitness. The sex partners here occupy multiple identities, and the sex acts never imply satisfaction, only dread and disappointment. And that, more than any specific imagery, seems the movie's primary offense. It tells a kind of truth — which lies, after all — even as it refuses to resolve or romanticize its mystery.

Where the Truth Lies Adapted and directed by Atom Egoyan A ThinkFilm release Opens Friday at Ritz Five recommended