ATOM APLOMB
South China Morning Post
March 16, 2006 Thursday
Director Atom Egoyan set out on his latest venture as a step into the
unknown, but discovered, much to his dismay, that old obsessions have
a way of creeping back in, writes Clarence Tsui
ATOM EGOYAN shudders when he remembers his last visit to Hong Kong.
It was 18 years ago and he was here at the behest of the Hong Kong
International Film Festival, at which his critically acclaimed second
full-length feature Family Viewing was shown. The highlight of the
night was to be a post-screening meet-the-audience session.
“Nobody asked questions,” says the Canadian director, remembering the
stony silence. “And I brought my mother with me. I wanted her to see
how exciting it could be – but it wasn’t what I thought.”
This time around, the reception couldn’t have been more different.
Egoyan was in town last week as guest of honour at the local
Canadian Film Festival – his latest film, Where the Truth Lies,
was the curtain-raiser for the two-week event – and the 46-year-old
director was feted wherever he went.
The red-carpet treatment hasn’t gone to his head. Settling into his
couch, the first thing he asks is how long it takes for mail-order
DVDs to arrive in Hong Kong from overseas. Then he launches into
an passionate recollection of a shopping spree in Yau Ma Tei the
night before, where he found DVDs he has never seen anywhere else,
and original production stills of Blowup and Rashomon.
Such enthusiasm for trivia is testament to Egoyan’s reputation as an
idiosyncratic director. At the same time that he was directing Colin
Firth and Kevin Bacon in Where the Truth Lies, he was: screening his
no-budget digital video pieces at Camera, a 51-seat theatre-cum-bar
he helps run in Toronto; preparing for a production of Wagner’s Ring
Cycle; and writing a book about the cultural meaning behind film
subtitles (which was published last year).
“I want to be able to use my position to support emerging talent and
give it a space of its own,” he says. “The great thing about the bar
and the cinema is that when filmmakers show their digital features,
there can be discussion with their friends about it – and I’m proud
to be able to present this zone. But it’s tough to programme it all
the time.”
He’s able to support such work, thanks to his major projects. And Where
the Truth Lies is probably his biggest and most commercial film yet.
Taking the shape of a noir thriller, Truth revolves around the
mysterious death of a young student, Maureen (Rachel Blanchard), in the
hotel room of a Rat Pack-like 1950s comedy duo (Firth as straight guy
Vince, and Bacon as his partner Lanny). The narrative takes place in
1972, 15 years after that incident, when young journalist Karen (Alison
Lohman) is commissioned to interview the pair – whose partnership
collapsed after the death – with a view to writing an expose.
But Karen does more than just interview the pair. First, she goes
to bed with Lanny; then, she gets involved in a night of steamy
shenanigans under the aegis of Vince. It slowly emerges that Karen’s
motives are far more than just financial or sexual: her pursuit of
the “truth” is as much about exonerating her own past – she was the
beneficiary of a charity telethon the duo starred in – as it is a
quest for justice.
Known for his subtle, slow-burning films, Egoyan surprised many with
what could qualify as a conventional whodunit. Even more surprising was
the amount of bare flesh in Truth. The cast appear in various stages
of undress, including a no-holds-barred menage-a-trois that earned
the film a Category III rating in Hong Kong (and an NC-17 in the US).
It’s a far cry from his last film, Ararat, a heavy piece that examines
the Armenian genocides in 1915 and 1918. Ararat won five Genies
(Canada’s annual film awards) in 2003, among them best film and best
actress (Arsinee Khanjian, Egoyan’s wife, who has starred in nearly all
of his films). The success didn’t translate to box-office receipts –
but it seems likely that Truth will do much better.
Egoyan – born to Armenian parents in Cairo, but raised in Victoria,
British Columbia – says he adapted Rupert Holmes’ pulp thriller as a
piece of light relief. “After Ararat, I needed to do something really
different,” he says. “I remember when I read the book I was laughing
because it was so pleasurable. And I thought this is exactly what I’ve
been looking for – something so different from what I’ve done, to get
that pure enjoyment of filmmaking, creating these images and this world
with the costumes, art direction and the music. It would just be fun.”
It was also a sharp departure for his cast, Egoyan says. “One of the
reasons Colin did this film was that he got to deconstruct this persona
he felt he was imprisoned by,” he says. “As we were shooting he was
doing all the Bridget Jones [sequel] promotion and he was suffocated
by this Darcy character. He really loved this idea of deconstructing
that and stripping all that away – literally.”
The same goes for Bacon, he says. “Kevin just wanted to take risks.
So many other people that I might have approached would never play
these roles because they’re so vulnerable, but I got two people who
are, first and foremost, actors. And for Alison Lohman, who’s 26,
the characters she played before in Matchstick Men and White Oleander
were adolescents, and she wanted to break out of that mould. I think
everyone was attracted to the project because they’re redefining
themselves and not playing what people would expect.”
Leaving aside the glamour and sleaze, Truth is similar to Egoyan’s
more subdued productions. His films touch on how technology mediates
and transforms experiences – whether it be homemade videos (Family
Viewing, in which a father “erases” past memories by taping porn
over images of his ex-wife and son), movies (a director conjuring
the Armenian genocide through a film in Ararat), or voice recordings
(Krapp’s Last Tape, his film adaptation of the Samuel Beckett play,
in which the sole protagonist agonises over decisions he made, through
audio journals from his life). It’s no coincidence that Karen’s taped
interviews, the comfort she feels in rewatching old reels of Larry and
Vince’s telethons, and Maureen’s covert use of a recording machine in
the pair’s hotel room just before she dies provide the keys to Truth.
Egoyan’s obsession with the topic goes all the way back to his first
short film, Howard in Particular. Made in 1979 when he was studying
international relations at the University of Toronto – Egoyan never
went to film school – it’s a peculiar piece in which an aged worker
at a fruit-processing factory is told about his redundancy via a
tape recording.
Awards from local film festivals allowed Egoyan to continue making
independent short films while still at university (his first few pieces
were backed by Hart House, the university’s arts and recreational
centre). Provincial funding bodies contributed later on, with Ontario
Arts Council sponsoring his first feature, Next of Kin (1984), about
a young man who transforms his life by claiming to be the long-lost
son of an Armenian-Canadian family.
After spells directing episodes for Canadian and American television
– including Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone – Egoyan wrote
and directed Family Viewing, which propelled him into the limelight.
He has become a favourite at European film festivals: Speaking Parts
(1989) and The Adjuster (1991) both made it to the Director’s Fortnight
showcase in Cannes, but his major breakthrough was Exotica (1994),
a multi-layered intrigue about several dysfunctional characters
frequenting a table-dance club. It won the International Critics’
Prize at Cannes, an achievement Egoyan matched three years later with
The Sweet Hereafter.
Unlike David Cronenberg, the other, better-known Canadian director of
his generation, Egoyan basically sealed himself off from portraying
mainstream concerns – until now. He says making Truth was a step into
the unknown. Having completed the film, he discovered that a rebirth
is easier said than done.
“It was only when I started editing Truth that I realised it was
dealing with a lot of similar themes, but in a different way,”
he says. “There’s the moment when I brought out the tape recorder
[for Karen’s scenes] that I was going, ‘Oh, this is the same type
of recorder John Hurt used for Krapp’s Last Tape’. I was trying to
reinvent myself – but you never really can.”
Where the Truth Lies opens today.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
