Adoration

Following the failed effort to cross over into conventional, commercially viable film-making with Where The Truth Lies (2005), Canadian auteur Egoyan returns to his signature style with Adoration. The camera glides at a near-perfect leisurely pace. He blends a rich soundtrack (an excellent, mournful score by Mychael Danna) with elegant sound bridges and sharp, clipped dialogue. And he once again moves gracefully between assorted plotlines. Unfortunately, the stories here are thin, unnecessarily complicated and glibly cryptic; some sections are difficult to follow, even annoying in their self-consciousness. Audiences will be less receptive than they were to the director’s more balanced work, such as The Sweet Hereafter, or gutsy primal fare like Exotica.

In such seminal films as Speaking Parts back in 1989, Egoyan was in the forefront of addressing the effect of new technologies on human behaviour. In Adoration, the high-tech items are nothing but a Nokia digital camera with which teen Simon (Bostick) films his dying grandfather and an Apple computer the boy uses to debate with friends about terrorism and victimhood, themes that run throughout the movie. One can’t help but wonder whether these choices point to a lack of growth in his film-making. (He has expanded into installation and opera.)

A major problem here is a literary device that, in this case, does a disservice to the film’s multiple strands: the unreliable narrator. Simon, an orphan who is cared for by his angry, tow-truck driver uncle, Tom (Speedman), is confused and so is the audience. Was his Arab father, Sami (Jenkins), a terrorist willing to sacrifice his pregnant wife to bomb a plane’ Or did he intentionally ram a truck with his car to kill her, as Simon’s grandfather claims’ Or was he a sweet, innocuous guy’

Another conundrum is Sabine (Egoyan staple Khanjian), Simon’s nosy French teacher. She presents herself as a refugee from Lebanon who has lost all of her family - in one particularly embarrassing scene she shows up unannounced at Tom’s home donning an oriental mask - then admits to Tom that she was Sami’s wife before he ran off with Simon’s mother. Ultimately, the revelations do not amount to much, and intercutting among the possible realities for each character does not add to the overall weightlessness.

The most consistent character is Simon’s grandfather: a narrowminded xenophobe who clearly hates Sami and other Arabs. Egoyan’s effort to humanize Sami andundermine stereotypes of Arabs as terrorists is noble but ultimately unsuccessful. By backtracking stylistically, the director is, perhaps ironically, veering in a positive direction. He just needs a script to match.

Production companies
Ego Films Art
Serendipity Point Films
The Film Farm
ARP

International sales
Maximum Films
Charlotte Mickie
(1) 416 960 0300
charlotte@maximumfilms.ca

US distribution
Sony Pictures Classics

Executive producers
Robert Lantos
Michele Halberstadt
Laurent Petin

Producers
Simone Urdl
Jennifer Weiss

Screenplay
Atom Egoyan

Cinematography
Paul Sarossy

Editor
Susan Shipton

Production design
Phillip Barker

Music
Mychael Danna

Main cast
Arsinee Khanjian
Scott Speedman
Rachel Blanchard
Noam Jenkins
Devon Bostick
Kenneth Welsh