Next of Kin

A film set in Canada. Peter is twenty-three. He lives with his parents and does nothing. His mother and father take no interest in him. They talk at the dinner table and do not hear each other. The family goes to therapy. The sessions are recorded. Peter watches the recordings. There are other families at the centre. The tapes are archived. Peter takes another family's tape by mistake. The Deryans are of Armenian origin. A mother, a father and a daughter. Something is mentioned on the tape. They had a son years ago and had to give him up for adoption. That boy would be Peter's age now. Peter goes looking for the family. He introduces himself as that son. From there the film is a story of settling in. Peter enters the house, takes the room, starts working at the shop. The family accepts him. The sister, Azah, is suspicious. Then she lets it go too. What the narrative is interested in is not a lie but a need: its idea is that the family wanting their lost son back and Peter wanting a family fill the same hollow, and that the lie does not prevent it. Peter is useful in his new family. He mends things between the daughter and her father, sorts out the shop, and is talked to at home. None of that ever happened in his own family. Video is the narrative's instrument. Tapes, therapy recordings and family films run through it constantly. This is Atom Egoyan's first feature. He made it at twenty-three on a very small budget. All the themes of his later films are here: recording, identity, substitution and a distanced family. Patrick Tierney, Berj Fazalian, Sirvart Fazlian and Arsinée Khanjian are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1980s Canadian independent cinema and narratives built on identity. Who it is not for: anyone expecting technical quality; the budget shows in every frame and the performances are uneven.