Family Viewing

The fractured family of Atom Egoyan’s darkly comic second feature consists of Stan (David Hemblen), a mild sexual sadist; Sandra (Gabrielle Rose), his live-in mistress and video bondage partner; and his seventeen-year old son, Van (Aidan Tierney). Van’s deep resentment of his father becomes the catalyst of a plot to free his beloved grandmother from an old-age home and establish a new, blissfully “happy” family. Egoyan weaves an ironic tale of characters who seem most alive when they’re captured on videotape.