Atom Egoyan's film "Adoration" is a complex and emotional story about how little lies can be dangerous and how the truth always will triumph at the end but with a little bit of pain. In this thrilling story almost like an emotional and frantic time bomb waiting to explode Egoyan present us conflicted characters trying to figure out how to deal with their emotions, losses, their concepts of truth and lies, understanding and love. To the audience it is a spider's web not very easy to follow where you always keep asking more and more questions about how this story is gonna end.
In the story Simon (Devon Bostick) is a teenage boy who during a school task is asked by his French and Drama teacher Sabine (Arsinée Khanjian) to add intensity to its Drama exercise and present to the class as if all the things he was reading was true. Notice: it was lesson about a terrorist couple who exploded themselves in a airplane and Simon pretends to be the son of this couple. All that he says looks like the truth, he shocks the whole class and makes the teacher very impressed but it's not. He lives with his uncle Tom (Scott Speedman) a hard working guy with many financial problems; and Simon's parents died in a car crash and he not knows too many things about them.
The story gets dark when suddenly Simon shares his fake story in a chat room sort of like if he was testing people's reactions about the story of the poor boy whose fathers died in a terrorist attack. This part of the film gets totally unconvincingly specially when Simon talks to other teenagers and we see their opinions, very annoying. Once again not a real deal of what teenagers really think and act, very phony.
If you look closer you will notice that Simon almost doesn't replies to the other people, letting themselves talk what they want, mostly because he knows his parents past is not true, but he wanted to know how bad he could felt if people said bad things about his mother and father. But he gets that experience with his dying grandfather (Kenneth Welsh) who didn't liked Simon's father (Noam Jenkins) an Arab. Even with that he stays the same, trying to figure out who their parents were and the story behind the violin, one of the most precious treasures they left for him.
Egoyan chooses to tell this story in a very non-linear way, pretty much like a puzzle with many missing pieces and in the end you'll get a very beautiful picture. This is very important, having the story presented in a linear way it would spoil the whole mystery behind everything. Although some connections are forced, situations seems very unbelievable and non convincing at all and the audience has to swallow it down if you think in another way thinking that it's just a film and things like that doesn't happen in real life you'll enjoy it.
"Adoration" is also enjoyable for the excellent performances of the casting. Arsinée Khanjian is wonderful playing the teacher and the mysterious woman who visits Simon's house dressed as Arab. My only reservation comes to the acting of the main lead actor. I think that Devon Bostick was a good and a bad choice for the role of Simon. Good because a more famous young actor would be too distractive to play this role. And bad because I found him dead on scene, with lack of expression (although he's cute), but that might be because the script wanted a young guy with few emotional response. Speedman surprised me a lot with a strong dramatical role, and the few scenes of veteran Kenneth Welsh are excellent and the way his character's behavior turns from a dedicate grandfather to an hateful person is shocking. Brilliant study of character but not much believable. 8/10
In the story Simon (Devon Bostick) is a teenage boy who during a school task is asked by his French and Drama teacher Sabine (Arsinée Khanjian) to add intensity to its Drama exercise and present to the class as if all the things he was reading was true. Notice: it was lesson about a terrorist couple who exploded themselves in a airplane and Simon pretends to be the son of this couple. All that he says looks like the truth, he shocks the whole class and makes the teacher very impressed but it's not. He lives with his uncle Tom (Scott Speedman) a hard working guy with many financial problems; and Simon's parents died in a car crash and he not knows too many things about them.
The story gets dark when suddenly Simon shares his fake story in a chat room sort of like if he was testing people's reactions about the story of the poor boy whose fathers died in a terrorist attack. This part of the film gets totally unconvincingly specially when Simon talks to other teenagers and we see their opinions, very annoying. Once again not a real deal of what teenagers really think and act, very phony.
If you look closer you will notice that Simon almost doesn't replies to the other people, letting themselves talk what they want, mostly because he knows his parents past is not true, but he wanted to know how bad he could felt if people said bad things about his mother and father. But he gets that experience with his dying grandfather (Kenneth Welsh) who didn't liked Simon's father (Noam Jenkins) an Arab. Even with that he stays the same, trying to figure out who their parents were and the story behind the violin, one of the most precious treasures they left for him.
Egoyan chooses to tell this story in a very non-linear way, pretty much like a puzzle with many missing pieces and in the end you'll get a very beautiful picture. This is very important, having the story presented in a linear way it would spoil the whole mystery behind everything. Although some connections are forced, situations seems very unbelievable and non convincing at all and the audience has to swallow it down if you think in another way thinking that it's just a film and things like that doesn't happen in real life you'll enjoy it.
"Adoration" is also enjoyable for the excellent performances of the casting. Arsinée Khanjian is wonderful playing the teacher and the mysterious woman who visits Simon's house dressed as Arab. My only reservation comes to the acting of the main lead actor. I think that Devon Bostick was a good and a bad choice for the role of Simon. Good because a more famous young actor would be too distractive to play this role. And bad because I found him dead on scene, with lack of expression (although he's cute), but that might be because the script wanted a young guy with few emotional response. Speedman surprised me a lot with a strong dramatical role, and the few scenes of veteran Kenneth Welsh are excellent and the way his character's behavior turns from a dedicate grandfather to an hateful person is shocking. Brilliant study of character but not much believable. 8/10