A sense of deep loss and confusion hovers over Adoration, Atom Egoyan’s follow-up to his disappointing mainstream-courting Where the Truth Lies, which finds the director employing the gliding cinematography, sparse, mournful music, and splintered chronology of his earlier successes. Like The Sweet Hereafter, Egoyan’s latest pivots around a fatal car accident that directly affects both a community at large as well as, specifically, one family. Having lost his American mom (Rachel Blanchard) and Lebanese dad (Noam Jenkins) years earlier in a smash-up that his now-deceased bigoted grandfather (Kenneth Welsh) claimed was intentionally caused by his father, high-schooler Simon (Devon Bostick) lives in the custody of uncle Tom (Scott Speedman), a tow truck operator struggling to make ends meet and cope with the ingrained intolerance bestowed upon him by his father. Their lives are thrown into turmoil when, assigned by his French teacher Sabine (Arsinée Khanjian) to translate a news item about a pregnant woman whose fiancé secretly stowed explosives in her bag before boarding a plane for Israel, Simon instead passes off as true a version of the story in which he claims to be the couple’s child. Predictably, once Simon’s dramatic experiment hits the Internet, controversy and emotional chaos ensue.

Read More...