Adoration (2009)
Directed by Atom Egoyan
For his French-class assignment, a high school student weaves his family history in a news story involving terrorism, and goes on to invite an Internet audience in on the resulting controversy.
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What critics compared Adoration to
Although it's very much a "post-9/11" movie in subject matter, "Adoration" will probably remind viewers the most of Egoyan's "Exotica."
Prolific writer-director Atom Egoyan has already secured a large following stateside with films like the exceptional The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica and The Adjuster.
He tapped deep reservoirs of vulnerability in Sarah Polley (Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter), Elaine Cassidy (Felicia’s Journey), and newcomer David Alpay (Ararat).
There are so many interesting ideas in the first two acts of the film, which feel more like the Egoyan who made waves with the excellent Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, that it's easier to forgive the final act, which feels far too much like the twisting and turning Where the Truth Lies.
After the relatively generic thrillers Felicia's Journey and Where the Truth Lies and his epic drama Ararat, director Atom Egoyan returns to the elliptical narrative style and shifting points of view that characterized his earlier works, such as The Adjuster and Exotica.
All the intellectual elements one might expect from a movie by Atom Egoyan - the Canadian director best-known for his films "The Sweet Hereafter" and "Exotica" - play a powerful role in "Adoration," his latest feature.
Chloe is a remake of the 2004 French film Nathalie, and is the first of Mr. Egoyan’s films (The Sweet Hereafter and last year’s Adoration) that he didn’t write himself (Erin Cressida Wilson, who penned Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ode to spanking in Secretary, gets credit).
Overrated director Atom Egoyan shows control over his narrative, which improves over his last few pictures (“Adoration,” “Ararat” and “Where the Truth Lies”) which had no tangible stories of which to speak.
It's the first feature he's directed from a script not his own — the writer is Erin Cressida Wilson ("Secretary") — and in it he adheres to a straightforward, accessible linear template that avoids the fractured abstractions of a film such as "Adoration" or "The Sweet Hereafter."
Director Atom Egoyan, who also directed Adoration, Where the Truth Lies and Exotica, includes an appropriately brisk pace, exquisite cinematography and a well-chosen musical score.
This concept of narration as a medium for reimagining reality builds directly out of Egoyan’s last effort, 2008’s Adoration , but whereas that film felt overstuffed with densely wrought thematics, Chloe instead feels too hollow, a sexy but largely unilluminating narrative that finally devolves into a fairly conventional thriller.