A teenager (Devon Bostick) who was orphaned after the tragic deaths of his parents is prompted by his teacher (Arsinee Khanjian) to deliver a fictional monologue about his father's failed terrorist act as fact in an elaborate "dramatic exercise" in Armenian-Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan's latest thought-provoking piece of abstraction "Adoration". As the fiction spins out of control over the internet, the true motives of those involved in the lie are revealed and back-stories come collapsing in on each other in Egoyan's signature elliptical style.

Egoyan, as always, gives patient viewers plenty to chew on. Like the young man's monologue that marries a true story to a false one about his parents, "Adoration" itself is an interesting dramatic experiment designed to provoke. It tackles many issues including the motives of terrorists, fractured familial relationships, the hollowness of alleged connections made through modern technology and the dangers of thinking those connections can replace real face-to-face human interaction. Though I always question Egoyan's motive in casting his wife Arsinee Khanjian in his films, in many ways, she gives her most understated and powerful performance here. Bostick does a decent job with a tough role, though Rachel Blanchard is curiously flat in the flashbacks as his mother. The true revelation is Scott Speedman as the troubled tow-truck driver who reluctantly steps in to raise his sister's son after she dies. His story arc proves to be the most involving, though one wishes his background had been more developed.

The bizarre detour into sleazy mediocrity with "Where the Truth Lies" seems to have made Egoyan a little rusty as he returns to a more familiar form here for those who have been watching the arc of his career. The elliptical folding in of the converging plot lines seems clumsier in "Adoration" than it did in his earlier works, and the "big reveal" comes a few scenes too early and sucks out the emotional impact. Unlike "Exotica" which had the swagger of a young auteur at the top of his game, or "The Sweet Hereafter" which came from the sublime source material of novelist Russell Banks, "Adoration" represents Egoyan bruised from years of wear left to his own devices. Though compelling, he gets the best of himself and let's the ideas take over the characters. He also relies far too much on visuals of non-characters in chat rooms or of people being recorded with cameras. However, Egoyan scores when Mychael Danna lends his musical compositions. The frequent collaborator does a magnificent job creating a haunting score with a recurring violin motif that plays integral to one of the back-stories.

Back in the late 1990's Atom Egoyan was in a league of his own and master of his own style. In the past ten years, however, international cinema has seen the emergence of filmmakers like Mexico's Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("Amores Perros", "21 Grams" and "Babel") and Germany's Fa-tih Akin (whose superb "The Edge of Heaven" deserved a bigger audience stateside last year). They often tackle similar themes in an elliptical Egoyanesque manner. But because their films are presented on a larger scale and infused with a certain energy and immediacy, Egoyan's films, in all their isolated scholarly austerity, have been unfairly left out in the cold. "Adoration" may not be Egoyan's best, but it proves he still has some good ideas in him and he isn't ready to be dismissed just yet.

Atom Egoyan, an Armenian born in Cairo in 1960 and living and working in Canada, is a unique voice among contemporary filmmakers. His films rarely follow a linear structure, electing instead to rely on flashbacks and flash forwards to alert the viewer to respond emotionally to the fragments of story provided - those fragments emphasizing his obsession with alienation and isolation, the by-products of a society homogenized by technology, bureaucracy, and mob rule. His films have collected a wide audience of viewers who prefer to be intellectually challenged rather than be 'entertained': 'Next of Kin', 'Speaking Parts', 'The Adjuster', 'The Sweet Hereafter', 'Felicia's Journey', 'Ararat', 'Where the Truth Lies', 'Chloe', and this little masterpiece, 'ADORATION'.

Young Simon (Devon Bostick) is enthralled with the Internet and creating videos to place on the Internet. His parents died in an automobile accident years ago and he has been raised by his uncle Tom (Scott Speedman), a angry young man who has never married and whose only other family member living is his father Nick (Thomas Hauff) for whom he has little affection. Simon tends to his ill grandfather, videotapes him telling stories about his daughter, Simon's mother Rachel (Rachel Blanchard), swearing that Simon's father Sami (Noam Jenkins) intentionally caused the fatal accident, not unlike a terrorist action. At school Simon takes French from teacher Sabine (Arsinée Khanjian) who encourages Simon's penchant for drama by encouraging a story Simon has created: he postulates that Sami placed explosives in Rachel's bag while pregnant Rachel flew to Israel with the intention of exploding the airplane killing 400 people. Simon takes his developing tale to the Internet chat rooms where the story then leaks out to the parents of the teenagers chatting. The 'news' results in Sabine being fired from her job. Sabine visits Simon and Tom's house disguised by an elegant burka, and encounters the angry Tom who had already had a previous encounter with Sabine over a towed car. The intensity of the make-believe story of Sami being a terrorist creates havoc in the town, between Tom and Simon, and with Simon's relationship to his grandfather. There is a surprise twist to the true background of Simon's parents, Sabine, Tom, and the grandfather and Simon's fictional 'play' opens doors of emotional reaction from Simon's internet chatroom experience and from all of the people involved in the story.

While this 'summary' of the plot is confusing to read, so is the progress of the tale Atom Egoyan has filmed. He intensifies the drama with moments of utter beauty and shared love as well as condemnations from the people who are adversely affected by Simon's concocted 'lie', a falsity perpetrated by his 'accomplice' Sabine. Keeping the action level low, accompanied by the hauntingly beautiful music for solo cello and solo violin by Mychael Danna, and enhanced by the tight cinematography of Paul Sarossy, only makes this little film that much more powerful to observe and digest. As with all of Egoyan's films, it is the afterburn that lingers in the mind of the viewer that drives the power of the work home.

Grady Harp

Simon (Devon Bostick) tells a story in his french class about his mother (Rachel Blanchard) and terrorism. His teacher Sabine (Arsinée Khanjian) talks him into developing the story as if it's a true story. He lives with his uncle Tom (Scott Speedman).

This is a very ambitious movie. But the problem is the story lacks tension. It's all make believe. Also the internet chats are just visually boring. It's very static. It grinds down the movie. It's slow to begin with. And it has an aura of manufactured writing. It's as if Simon's manufactured writing infest the whole movie. There are very interesting ideas being thrown about but it's doesn't add up to a compelling movie.