Cannes

Adoration

 (Canada-France)

By JUSTIN CHANG

Atom Egoyan's 'Adoration' is competing at the Cannes Film Festival.

A Sony Pictures Classics (in U.S.) release of a Serendipity Point Films (Canada)/ARP Selection (France) presentation of an Ego Film Arts (Canada) production, with the participation of Telefilm Canada, M, Super Ecran, Astral Media, Movie Central, Ontario Film & Television Tax Credit. (International sales: Maximum Films, Toronto.) Produced by Atom Egoyan, Simone Urdl, Jennifer Weiss. Executive producers, Robert Lantos, Michele Halberstadt, Laurent Petin.
Directed, written by Atom Egoyan.
 
Sabine - Arsinee Khanjian
Tom - Scott Speedman
Rachel - Rachel Blanchard
Sami - Noam Jenkins
Simon - Devon Bostick
Morris - Kenneth Welsh
 

Atom Egoyan's "Adoration" is a fascinating muddle. Folding all sorts of post-9/11 questions -- about the ethics of terrorism, the deceptiveness of outward appearances, the ways technology can enable dialogue yet hinder the truth -- into a very Egoyanesque miasma of elegantly fractured chronology and provocative ideas, this ambitious think-piece ultimately smothers its good intentions in didactic revelations, earnest pleading and incessant violin music. Engrossing nonetheless, the story of a high schooler troubled by his parents' legacy reps one of the Canadian writer-director's most accessible efforts, but without unanimous critical adoration, Sony Classics pickup won't get much B.O. love.

In keeping with his recent pattern of alternating literary adaptations with original material, "Adoration" resembles 2005's novel-based "Where the Truth Lies" (among other Egoyan films) in the way it tantalizingly doles out narrative information across multiple time frames and perspectives.

Impetus for the drama is a news story about a terrorist who planted a bomb in the luggage of his pregnant girlfriend, who didn't realize what she was carrying until she was stopped by security agents before boarding a flight to Israel. After high school teacher Sabine (Arsinee Khanjian) reads the story to her students, one of them, Simon (Devon Bostick), imagines himself to be the girlfriend's now-grown child, and writes a piece expressing ambivalent feelings toward the father who almost ended his life before it even began.

For reasons that only become clear later, Sabine convinces Simon to present his work to the class as fact, not fiction -- easily managed, as Simon's parents are both dead and he now lives with his unhappy uncle, Tom (Scott Speedman). Faux flashbacks show Simon's mother Rachel (Rachel Blanchard) and Lebanese father Sami (Noam Jenkins), clearly in love even as Sami makes arrangements for Rachel's fateful, solitary trip to the Holy Land.

Simon takes the deception further by airing his musings in video chat sessions, where they are commented on in turn by his classmates and, eventually, their parents and other adults. Presented as an online chorus of arguments on such issues as whether martyrdom (or in this case, martyring your loved ones) could ever be considered heroic, the responses Simon gets are understandably heated. They're also unpersuasively long-winded, seeming to take place in a world where people have nothing better to do than pontificate angrily at their Webcams.

Though Egoyan is clearly intrigued by the potential uses and abuses of technology (a theme that dates as far back as his '80s catalog, including 1989's "Speaking Parts"), he abandons these notions in favor of an odd dramatic thrust, as Sabine pursues a meeting with Tom and asks meddlesome questions about how Simon's parents died. This and other secrets are revealed in a succession of dramatic turns and coincidences, all accompanied by the keening strings of Mychael Danna's intriguingly dissonant but much-overplayed score (a problem carried over from "Where the Truth Lies").

As ever, it's hard not to respect the sheer number of ideas, concerns and subtexts Egoyan touches on, from the difficulty of cross-cultural communication to the human tendency to construct alternate realities and identities. While the script steers clear of the minefield of Mideast politics, it foregrounds the three major Western religions throughout, not least in the way it conflates pregnant Rachel's trip to Israel with the story of Jesus' birth.

But the common charge against Egoyan, that he's more intellectual than dramatist, holds true here, in a film too contrived and prone to spelling itself out to achieve the catharsis it strains for at the end. Khanjian, the helmer's wife and ensemble regular, is given one blunt speech after another as the talkative prof who's either a bold provocateur or a few sheep short of a nativity scene.

Bostick is nicely cast as a smart, prickly student with a lot of questions, though his Simon, for all his reckless actions, turns out to be a mere pawn in a grandiose narrative scheme. Speedman and Blanchard, both known for their work on teen skeins, deliver subtle, affecting work, as does Jenkins as a much-misunderstood dad.

Tech package is excellent, distinguished by Paul Sarossy's moodily underlit lensing and editor Susan Shipton's fluid juggling act.

Camera (Deluxe color), Paul Sarossy; editor, Susan Shipton; music, Mychael Danna; production designer, Phillip Barker; art director, Barry Isenor; set decorator, Jim Lambie; costume designer, Debra Hanson; sound (Dolby Digital), Bissa Scekic; sound designer/supervising sound editor, Steve Munro; supervising re-recording mixer, Daniel Pellerin; re-recording mixer, Jan Rudy; visual effects supervisor, Robert Crowther; visual effects, Rocket Science VFX; line producer, Stephen Traynor; associate producer, Marcy Gerstein; assistant director, Daniel J. Murphy; casting, John Buchan, Jason Knight. Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 22, 2008. Running time: 101 MIN.
(English, French dialogue)