adoration

Exclusive video from Cannes of Atom Egoyan and his ‘Adoration’ stars—Scott Speedman, Rachel Blanchard, Devon Bostick

J. J. Abrams and Atom Egoyan beam up alien worlds from far-flung ends of the cinematic universe

Start your engines, and let the madness begin. For the next ten days, TIFF turns Toronto into the Cannes of North America, but rather than promenading down the Croisette by the beaches of the Côte d’Azur, those rushing to premieres will be sidestepping construction sites along Bloor St. in a city so thoroughly excavated it’s beginning to look like a Designer Walk war zone. Never mind. For those on their annual fall search for the cinematic grail, that’s just another obstacle. Navigating a major film festival is always an extreme sport. Scrambling t score a tough ticket or uncover a hidden gem is the name of the game. At TIFF, the stakes are high: no film festival in the world has a richer program. Which doesn’t mean all the films are great, or even good. No, with 312 films—including 249 features—from 64 countries, TIFF can seem like a motion picture paradise, or the industrial outlet mall of world cinema. The trick is to be at the right film at the right time.

So in the end, how was Cannes? As I’m writing this, at 36,000 ft. somewhere above Greenland, I realize I’ll need a response for that question by the time I get back. The short answer: the weather sucked, and it wasn’t a banner year for films, but there were some good ones. They still need time to settle. As much as critics grumble about the quality of the films when we’re racing around the festival, by the end of the year, they’re usually starting to look pretty good. Some final reflections:

Skipped a French movie to see Atom Egoyan accept the Ecumenical Jury Prize. Looks like my earlier announcement of it broke an embargo. Oops. Anyway, speeches were made, champagne was popped and now it’s official. Egoyan, who won the same prize for The Sweet Hereafter, said that at the time he didn’t really understand why that film was chosen. But he could see that Adoration, which hinges on themes of cultural tolerance, is a more logical fit for an award that honours a depth of spiritual understanding.

This just in. Atom Egoyan has won the Ecumenical jury’s prize in Cannes for Adoration. It’s awarded by a different jury than the one chaired by Sean Penn, which decides the main prizes. With rather fuzzy criteria, the Ecumenical jury recognizes films that have a spiritual dimension and plumb the depths of the human condition. Previous recipients include Babel and Cache. Egoyan won the prize 11 years ago for The Sweet Hereafter, which then won the International Critics’ Prize and the Grand Jury Prize in Cannes before going on to receive two Oscar nominations. Whether or not Adoration will follow suit, at least Egoyan won’t be going be home empty-handed.

Atom Egoyan’s Adoration premieres here tonight, and was unveiled to the press earlier today. I saw the film back in Toronto, and liked it, but figured it would polarize audiences in Cannes. After the failures of Ararat and Where the Truth Lies, which both suffered from overwrought ambition–and which even Egoyan’s fans had trouble defending–Adoration is a more intimate film on a much smaller budget. It shows the Toronto auteur returning to his tangled roots, and he seems to relish the freedom. This is classic Egoyan, a playful, perverse intrigue that throws a myriad of ideas into incestuous play and makes of virtue of a preposterous plot. I won’t go into detail here, but it’s about a teenage boy (Devon Bostick) who creates a fictional tale of a terrorist incident involving his deceased parents, which triggers a series of video discussion groups on the Internet and some very bizarre behaviour by the boy’s French/drama teacher, played by the director’s wife, Arsinee Khanjian.