I Wanna Be Adored

Adoration - dir. Atom Egoyan - 2008 - Canada - Sony Pictures Classics

Written for Gone Cinema Poaching.

It seems a long time ago that Atom Egoyan, after the successes of Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, was among the forefront of international cinema. By following The Sweet Hereafter, which garnered the Egyptian-born, Canadian-raised filmmaker two Oscar nominations, with the disappointing Felicia's Journey, we got our first indication that Egoyan might never create the magic he showed during the late '80s and '90s again. With Adoration, Egoyan returns to the style and structure that worked so well for him early in his career; unfortunately, something's missing, even if it feels like all the pieces are there.

Those familiar with the director's work will spot some of the director's trademarks of style and theme easily. Airport customs, video recorders, fragmented narrative, paternal struggles, Arsinée Khanjian, devastating loss, the nature of truth, traces of personal ancestry. All are weaved into Adoration as one might expect, so why does the film feel so minor league? Like Ararat, the only post-Sweet Hereafter film of his that I genuinely like (even though I'm in the minority), Adoration never comes off like a sad act of self-mimicry. Egoyan continues to pose fascinating, gray-area quandaries; they just don't resonate or haunt the way his films always used to.

I suspect one of the reasons why could be attributed to the fact that Adoration (as well as Ararat) addresses very specific, button-pushing issues where Exotica, The Adjuster, Family Viewing and The Sweet Hereafter tackled more abstract ideas through less particular situations (Where the Truth Lies is another story altogether). It's not that Egoyan is preaching or over-symplifying these matters; it's that, like Charles Aznavour's character in Ararat says, Adoration feels like something he always "needed" to make. This necessity and self-applied obligation to explore terrorism and the waves of ignorance that surround it restrains the director and make the film's mysteries and revelations a hell of a lot less seamless and profound.

Additionally, the importance Egoyan places on keeping Adoration from being sanctimonious gives way for some glaring surface-level problems. It never seemed to dawn on Egoyan the preposterousness of the film's main plot detail, in which high schooler Simon (Devon Bostick) presents an assignment/monologue, with the encouragement of his French teacher Sabine (Khanjian) who also teaches drama, that adopts the perspective of an unborn child whose Middle Eastern father has planted a bomb on the child's mother as she boards a flight to Israel without him. Simon asserts that the story is true, even though his parents (Rachel Blanchard, Noam Jenkins) actually died in a car accident. This "experiment" leads to more social exercises between the boy and his teacher, all of which begin to enrage the (physical and online) community. All the major plot points and subsequent disclosures never rise above their own contrivances, and you can almost see an uneasiness in the way Khanjian, Egoyan's wife and muse, plays her scenes.

Despite fantastic turns from Scott Speedman, as Simon's uncle who raises him after the accident, and Kenneth Welsh, every bit as creepy here as he was in Twin Peaks as Simon's grandfather, Egoyan can't get much out of Bostick, who plays the youthful centerpiece that's so crucial in nearly all of Egoyan's films. After eliciting such a mesmerizing performance from Sarah Polley in The Sweet Hereafter, Egoyan hasn't been able to replicate that with Elaine Cassidy, David Alpay, Alison Lohman (though she has been forgiven thanks to Drag Me to Hell) and now Bostick. In his two principle actors, we can see a glimpse of Egoyan's own admirable, but disconcerting hereafter, where everything has become a murky reflection of what once was and the pieces that once fit together no longer do.

The Decade List: Ararat (2002)

Ararat - dir. Atom Egoyan

Edward (Charles Aznavour), a director twenty years past his prime, finally has the opportunity to make the film he's always needed to make. His only knowledge of his heritage comes from his mother's tales of surviving the devastating effects of the Armenian genocide. The timing couldn't be better for this type of personal "prestige picture," considering both his declining respectability and the release of a new book by an art historian (Arsinée Khanjian) which explores the work of abstract expressionist painter Arshile Gorky and his linkage to the historical tragedy which you won't find in any Turkish history books. The film, titled Ararat, is predictably artless, an exploitive piece of important-with-a-capital-i movie making on the level of a made-for-TV Biblical film (is Charles Aznavour a thinly veiled Nicolas Roeg?).

This is the sort of film one might expect with Atom Egoyan's Ararat, the director's follow-up to his notably disappointing Felicia's Journey which covers his own personal ancestry. Unlike the fictitious Edward, Egoyan doesn't concern himself with the details of what happened, despite using a number of historical consultants for the particulars of the film-within-the-film. Rather, the director uses historical tragedy to probe how it relates to those directly and indirectly affected by it. For the central character Raffi (David Alpay), the events separate him from his late father, who was killed during an assassination attempt on a Turkish government official. While their literal separation was a residual of the events in question (made greater by Turkey's refusal to acknowledge it), Raffi's comfortable existence in Canada, nearly ninety years and two generations removed from the genocide, prevents him from comprehending the mentality of what his father was trying to do.

Of Ararat's abundant complexities, the juxtaposition of Raffi's quest in understanding his father with his step-sister Celia's (Marie-Josée Croze) search for justification of her father's death is one of the more surprising examinations. All of Ararat's conspiracy theories lie within her, and none of them directly relate to the genocide. Celia fluctuates between claiming that her step-mother Ani (Khanjian) either pushed him off a cliff or convinced him to do so. Celia assumes that in both Raffi and Ani's minds his father and her first husband's death symbolized honor, dying for a worthy cause, which in turn makes her father's death both shameful and insignificant by comparison.

Egoyan's Ararat never criticizes Edward's Ararat, despite the negative description I gave it above. Egoyan's even postulates a defense for Edward's, despite some disapproval from Ani, who readily admits she doesn't think in the way filmmakers do, in the various "poetic licenses" the film takes in setting and in relation to Gorky. As Raffi watches Ali (Elias Koteas) and Clarence (Bruce Greenwood) act the scene in which the Armenians refuse to cooperate with the Turks, the visualization of the actions forges the pathway to understanding his father's feelings. Through a later dialogue between Raffi and Ali, Egoyan shows us the purpose of a film like Edward's, and through his own film (and despite the problems surrounding Christopher Plummer's final realization), expresses why this isn't the sort of film he would ever make.

With: David Alpay, Christopher Plummer, Arsinée Khanjian, Charles Aznavour, Marie-Josée Croze, Elias Koteas, Eric Bogosian, Bruce Greenwood, Brent Carver, Simon Abkarian, Raoul Bhaneja
Screenplay: Atom Egoyan
Cinematography: Paul Sarossy
Music: Mychael Danna
Country of Origin: Canada/France
US Distributor: Miramax

Premiere: 20 May 2002 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 12 November 2002 (AFI Film Festival)

Awards: Best Picture, Best Actress - Arsinée Khanjian, Best Supporting Actor - Elias Koteas, Best Music, Best Costume Design - Beth Pasternak (Genie Awards, Canada)

The Decade List: À ma sœur! (2001)

À ma sœur! [Fat Girl] - dir. Catherine Breillat

My legacy with Fat Girl is a long, tumultuous one. I first saw it at the 2001 Saint Louis International Film Festival; I was alone, though I ran into a coworker who brought his girlfriend. I still haven't figured out why they were there, unless they'd seen Romance and hoped for another dose of explicit sexuality, but I did notice them dozing off at multiple points in the film. Well, I walked out of the film dazed and smitten, so much so that I brought an entire group of my high school friends along with me when the film made its theatrical run a couple of months later. They shared my enthusiasm for the film, but it wasn't until a few years later that the very mention of Fat Girl would create friction between the people I knew in a way no other film previously had.

My friend Dan was a member of Loyola Chicago's Cinema Club, and they had dedicated a month to female filmmakers. As a big admirer of the film, Dan suggested Fat Girl, and that suggestion didn't go over well. One girl in the club claimed the film was, quite simply, "a movie about a girl who likes getting raped." This spread, particularly among those individuals the girl was recruiting for her side of the argument (many of which hadn't even seen it). On a car ride to Chicago, Dan confessed that our mutual friend Mary had joined the side of this girl, which I found to be outrageous. Drunkenly, after seeing The Boredoms play a show, I brought this up to Mary, and thus began a strange feud in which I annoyingly attempted to defend the film at every given (er, inappropriate) moment, even after I was given strict instruction not to mention anything about Breillat, fat girls or rape. Years later, our friendship mended, but to this day I still get an "Oh, God" from those near the tussle when the subject is brought up.

I may have worn out my defense for Fat Girl during those years, as re-watching it kind of left me stunned yet again. While I think my claim that Fat Girl is as important of a film as Truffaut's The 400 Blows in regards to films about youth, I found myself without defense when that scene occurs. Not the scene the girl in the film club was so opposed to (which is unbelievably edited out of the UK DVD), but the one that proceeds it. Was that just a way to REALLY drive the message home? Though I applaud the fact that Breillat doesn't hold back her feelings, I, for once, didn't know what to say to my friend who found it cheap and callous. Breillat works similarly to Claire Denis in Trouble Every Day by building toward the scene with subtlety, although Breillat does create some unshakable tension with all the stunt driving that happens right before. I thought I'd be able to rationalize it before writing about it, but I guess not.

So "shocks" aside, Fat Girl is breathtaking. Its honesty and complexity in dealing with both the budding sexuality of teenage girls and their relationship with one another are unmatchable. Fat Girl stands as Breillat's finest example thusfar of seamlessly melding theory and story together, which had mixed results in Romance and which wasn't even attempted in Anatomy of Hell [Anatomie de l'enfer]. In many ways, Fat Girl changed cinema for me, and maybe I've exhausted myself in defending its honor (Breillat's most famous quote states, "all great artists are hated"). So forgive me for having nothing fresh or of value to say about one of the decade's most memorable, and best, films.

With: Anaïs Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero De Rienzo, Arsinée Khanjian, Romain Goupil, Laura Betti
Screenplay: Catherine Breillat
Cinematography: Giorgos Arvanitis
Country of Origin: France/Italy
US Distributor: Cowboy Booking/Criterion/Janus Films

Premiere: 10 February 2001 (Berlin International Film Festival)
US Premiere: September 2001 (Telluride Film Festival)

Awards: Manfred Salzgeber Award (Berlin International Film Festival); French Cineaste of the Year (Cannes Film Festival); Golden Hugo for Best Film (Chicago International Film Festival)