合家观赏

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).

伊戈扬早期作品中压抑，怪诞，诡异，病态，反伦理，性等等招牌式的充满猎奇感的元素都可以在此片中找到。而伊戈扬更是在影片中加入了录影带的元素，通过录影带这一现代工具将藏匿于现实生活之下的肮脏秘密从泥泞中慢慢拉出到阳光下。说到对影像与人之间关系的探讨以及将录影带作为元素来帮助叙事，对现代性起到批判作用的导演，就不得不提到迈克尔.哈内克。《隐藏的摄像机》中不断寄来的神秘录影带将男主的过往以及根深蒂固的阶级鸿沟慢慢勾勒出来。《第七大陆》中最后那台失去信号的电视再也无法向大众进行价值输出。《班尼的录像带》中暴力影像对观看者的心理以及行为的影响，对现实暴力的催化。《机遇编年史的71块碎片》中不断出现的战争，暴力，血腥的电视片段。哈内克对影像与人的关系和影响有着痴迷的狂热，而《合家观赏》里伊戈扬也加入了录影带元素，不过伊戈扬的录影带承载了父亲平静生活下的暗流与欲望，承载了在现实生活中永远不会知晓的秘密，录影带成为了揭示阴暗的证据，成为了坦诚相待的工具，这倒更容易让人想到索德伯格的《性，谎言与录像带》儿子范与继母之间暧昧的相处方式，情意浓浓的对视，性冲动不断的积聚。早已不见踪影的母亲在父亲嘴里是一个抛弃他们的冷血女人。被父亲亲手送进养老院的外婆目光呆滞，父亲不愿接外婆回家，在儿子的请求下，父亲去到养老院看望外婆，结果认错了人，将花送给了一个陌生老人......影片开始便给观众呈现了一个怪异，冷漠，压抑的家庭景象。父亲有两大癖好，一个是用摄影机记录下自己是做爱画面，记录下家庭生活画面以及性虐待前妻的画面。另一个是拨打色情电话，然后要求现任妻子按色情电话中的指示玩花样........而他的色情电话对象是与外婆同病房的另一个老人的女儿阿莲。阿莲为了支付母亲住院的费用，不得不通过打色情电话来赚钱，最后她甚至通过在酒店卖身来赚钱。而当她接客时，她的母亲死在了病床上，于是范将阿莲的母亲造假成自己的母亲，让父亲以为外婆死了。然后请求阿莲将自己的外婆以阿莲母亲的名义接回家照顾，这是范为了接回外婆而想出的计策。但当阿莲前去范的外婆（其实是自己母亲）的墓前看望时，被范的父亲看见了，父亲产生了疑心，并最终通过聘请私家侦探发现了真相。但范带着外婆抢先一步转移了，父亲最后没有找到范的外婆........影片最后是范，阿莲，母亲，外婆团聚在一起的画面。录影带不单起到了揭秘的作用，同样也起着推动剧情，建构叙事的作用，DV录像，侦探的偷拍录像，酒店走廊与房间里的监控录像，生活无时无刻不被监控。粗粝的影像质感和诡异的鼓点贯穿始终，这是伊戈扬最大胆的影像实验品。