A juvenilia from Canadian maverick Atom Egoyan, FAMILY VIEWING is his sophomore feature filmed when he was 27 year old. 18-year-old Van (Tierney) spends a lot of time visiting his maternal grandmother Armen (Keklikian), who is an Armenian immigrant now bedridden and vegetating in a nursing home, watching television with fellow invalids in a catatonic state, including the mother of Aline (Khanjian).

Van’s mother has been long out of the picture, he lives in a condominium apartment with his father Stan (Hemblen) and his lover Sandra (Rose), but his intention of moving Armen into the apartment is foiled by both, then one day, in the wake of an accident, with the consent of Aline, he finds an ingenious way if it beggars belief, to deceive Stan and is able to taking Armen out of the crummy nursing home.

In the mode of a shoestring production, FAMILY VIEWING makes a good fist of probing the fundamentals of watching and being watched, all the scenes in Stan’s condominium apartment are grainy, low-resolution home video footage that slowly unravels the insalubrious sides behind a closed door: Van’s transgressive attachment with Sandra is semi-incestuous (Rose is charismatically affectionate to countervail the relationship’s uncomfortable intimacy); Stan’s sexual proclivity involves making home videos of his sex act and enacting phone sex with Rose through a third party (which is also Aline’s avocation to earn extra money), the peculiar attention to unorthodox sexuality and social malaise has been one of the leitmotifs among his corpus, and here, Egoyan shows his acute acumen and felicity that leavens the narrative with strangely invoked aplomb and a knowingness that is devoid of neither mean-spirited judgements, nor simple sensationalization.

To today’s eyes, FAMILY VIEWING is first and foremost, an odd conversation piece of the analog era that facilitates our obsession with the naked truth, accompanied by Michael Danna’s equally unorthodox soundtrack that shreds any semblance of normalcy in Egoyan’s clinical dissection of a society both ailed and strengthened by alienation and peculiarity.

referential entries: Steven Soderbergh’s SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE (1989, 7.3/10); Egoyan’s CHLOE (2009, 6.9/10).

伊戈揚(yáng)早期作品中壓抑，怪誕，詭異，病態(tài)，反倫理，性等等招牌式的充滿獵奇感的元素都可以在此片中找到。而伊戈揚(yáng)更是在影片中加入了錄影帶的元素，通過(guò)錄影帶這一現(xiàn)代工具將藏匿于現(xiàn)實(shí)生活之下的骯臟秘密從泥濘中慢慢拉出到陽(yáng)光下。說(shuō)到對(duì)影像與人之間關(guān)系的探討以及將錄影帶作為元素來(lái)幫助敘事，對(duì)現(xiàn)代性起到批判作用的導(dǎo)演，就不得不提到邁克爾.哈內(nèi)克。《隱藏的攝像機(jī)》中不斷寄來(lái)的神秘錄影帶將男主的過(guò)往以及根深蒂固的階級(jí)鴻溝慢慢勾勒出來(lái)。《第七大陸》中最后那臺(tái)失去信號(hào)的電視再也無(wú)法向大眾進(jìn)行價(jià)值輸出?！栋嗄岬匿浵駧А分斜┝τ跋駥?duì)觀看者的心理以及行為的影響，對(duì)現(xiàn)實(shí)暴力的催化?！稒C(jī)遇編年史的71塊碎片》中不斷出現(xiàn)的戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)，暴力，血腥的電視片段。哈內(nèi)克對(duì)影像與人的關(guān)系和影響有著癡迷的狂熱，而《合家觀賞》里伊戈揚(yáng)也加入了錄影帶元素，不過(guò)伊戈揚(yáng)的錄影帶承載了父親平靜生活下的暗流與欲望，承載了在現(xiàn)實(shí)生活中永遠(yuǎn)不會(huì)知曉的秘密，錄影帶成為了揭示陰暗的證據(jù)，成為了坦誠(chéng)相待的工具，這倒更容易讓人想到索德伯格的《性，謊言與錄像帶》

兒子范與繼母之間曖昧的相處方式，情意濃濃的對(duì)視，性沖動(dòng)不斷的積聚。早已不見(jiàn)蹤影的母親在父親嘴里是一個(gè)拋棄他們的冷血女人。被父親親手送進(jìn)養(yǎng)老院的外婆目光呆滯，父親不愿接外婆回家，在兒子的請(qǐng)求下，父親去到養(yǎng)老院看望外婆，結(jié)果認(rèn)錯(cuò)了人，將花送給了一個(gè)陌生老人......影片開(kāi)始便給觀眾呈現(xiàn)了一個(gè)怪異，冷漠，壓抑的家庭景象。父親有兩大癖好，一個(gè)是用攝影機(jī)記錄下自己是做愛(ài)畫(huà)面，記錄下家庭生活畫(huà)面以及性虐待前妻的畫(huà)面。另一個(gè)是撥打色情電話，然后要求現(xiàn)任妻子按色情電話中的指示玩花樣........而他的色情電話對(duì)象是與外婆同病房的另一個(gè)老人的女兒阿蓮。阿蓮為了支付母親住院的費(fèi)用，不得不通過(guò)打色情電話來(lái)賺錢，最后她甚至通過(guò)在酒店賣身來(lái)賺錢。而當(dāng)她接客時(shí)，她的母親死在了病床上，于是范將阿蓮的母親造假成自己的母親，讓父親以為外婆死了。然后請(qǐng)求阿蓮將自己的外婆以阿蓮母親的名義接回家照顧，這是范為了接回外婆而想出的計(jì)策。但當(dāng)阿蓮前去范的外婆（其實(shí)是自己母親）的墓前看望時(shí)，被范的父親看見(jiàn)了，父親產(chǎn)生了疑心，并最終通過(guò)聘請(qǐng)私家偵探發(fā)現(xiàn)了真相。但范帶著外婆搶先一步轉(zhuǎn)移了，父親最后沒(méi)有找到范的外婆........影片最后是范，阿蓮，母親，外婆團(tuán)聚在一起的畫(huà)面。

錄影帶不單起到了揭秘的作用，同樣也起著推動(dòng)劇情，建構(gòu)敘事的作用，DV錄像，偵探的偷拍錄像，酒店走廊與房間里的監(jiān)控錄像，生活無(wú)時(shí)無(wú)刻不被監(jiān)控。粗糲的影像質(zhì)感和詭異的鼓點(diǎn)貫穿始終，這是伊戈揚(yáng)最大膽的影像實(shí)驗(yàn)品。