Guest of Honour review – David Thewlis grapples with sex, sin and dirty kitchens
Atom Egoyan’s cryptic drama about a man and his imprisoned daughter is a frustrating reminder of the director’s talents
Atom Egoyan and David Thewlis, two wayward stars of the 90s, make a valiant effort to stoke the embers of past glories in Guest of Honour, an elaborate, time-slipping thriller about the sins of the past and the moral quandaries of the present. I’m not convinced it amounts to any more than the sum of its parts, but the parts are intriguing – and some are possessed of real power.
Thewlis plays Jim Davis, a health inspector whose soft-spoken, unsmiling demeanour is either indicative of intense professionalism or creeping depression. He’s travelling between the restaurants of Toronto, identifying a hair in the food here, a rat dropping there, all the while pondering the crimes of his adult daughter Veronica (Laysla De Oliveira), who has landed in jail after supposedly having sex with her students. And elsewhere, in one of several parallel timelines, Veronica is puzzling over her dad, sitting down with a local priest (Luke Wilson, nodding and frowning) to compose the man’s eulogy. It’s as though these parties are operating on different frequencies, each cocking their heads to discern the actions of the other.