IMDb: The breakthrough film by the most stylish and original critic of the audio/visual age is a sophisticated mock soap opera charting the corrosive influence of TV and video on the fabric of modern family life. With astonishing versatility and a grab-bag of black comic gestures, writer director Atom Egoyan injects an air of deadpan, dispassionate humor into a convoluted melodrama which is less kinky than it sounds: a young man, finding his family identity threatened, rescues some nostalgic home videos before his father can erase them with homemade S&M porn, and then 'kidnaps' his neglected grandmother from her nursing home with the help of a sympathetic woman who earns a living selling phone sex. The screenplay shows a tendency toward over plotting (which should be obvious from even this thumbnail synopsis), but Egoyan unravels the many narrative knots with a rare technical and creative dexterity that earned his film the honor of being the best Canadian film of the year. [youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy1u1nT8iq4[/youtube]