Starring: Arsinee Khanjian, Scott Speedman, Louca Tassone, Noam Jenkins, Devon Bostick and Kenneth Walsh
Directed by: Atom Egoyan
MPAA Rating: R for language
Genre: Drama
By John Delia
An interesting film, Adoration brings an emotional story to the screen that although a good premise, fails to entertain. The storyline has a number of plot points that slowly come into play, each adding to a central character driven theme that vacillates so much that it looses it’s entertainment value.
Sabine (Khanjian), a high school French teacher, gives her class a translation exercise based on a real news story about a terrorist who plants a bomb in the airline luggage of his pregnant girlfriend. The assignment has a profound effect on one student, Simon (Bostick), who grew up being taken care of by his uncle (Speedman) following the death of his parents which he was lead to believe by his grandfather as intentional. In the course of translating, Simon re-imagines that the news item is his own family’s story, with the terrorist being his father. When Simon goes on the internet pretending that the terrorist bombing incident happened to him, the young student finds himself the center of controversy that leads to a real family secret.
I can appreciate Egoyan’s attempt to make the story realistic, but for me it was contrived. Many scenes were not sensible, acting was unconvincing and the plot implausible. Trying to hide the story and feed bits at a time works for some films, but not for this one. What happens here is that the more you learn about the characters and why they come into play, the more absurd the story.
FINAL ANALYSIS: Adoration looses its affection in the storyline. (2.5 of 5 Palm Trees)