53/100
Second viewing, last seen at Anthology Film Archives in 2000. Back then, I had no points of comparison apart from subsequent Egoyan films (most of which were great, as his downslide hadn’t yet begun in earnest); today, one must reckon with Next of Kin strongly resembling both Bart Layton’s The Imposter—a real-life version of this exact scenario, very nearly—and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Alps (once it becomes clear that Azah knows this dude isn’t her brother but is keeping quiet because he’s healing her family). This cuts both ways. 26 years ago, I likely found it absurd that the Deryans would accept this blatantly non-Armenian man as the son they gave up for adoption, even remarking upon his supposed physical resemblance to various family members…but it’s hard to make that complaint stick after seeing how readily Nicholas Barclay’s relatives accepted Frédéric Bourdin, whose story was even less plausible. On the other hand, Egoyan doesn’t really tackle Why, taking “Bedros is back!” for granted and focusing intently on the bizarro therapeutic aspects that anchored his work from the jump. I still find this initial effort a little thin, relying too heavily on voiceover narration (though that does get repurposed into audio recordings that have a manipulative flavor, even as they repeat entire phrases previously spoken directly to us) and employing formal devices, like Egoyan’s deft use of an airport’s luggage carousel, that don’t really dovetail with the narrative. And there are some major miscalculations: the dorky dramatic convenience of George’s stress-induced “heart attack,” the blithe cruelty of Peter allowing George to add “& Son” to his store’s sign at a time when he (Peter) still fully expects to abandon them within 48 hours. (That this resolves happily doesn’t negate how out of character it seems in the moment.) You can definitely see a potentially first-rate artist at work, though, and it didn’t take very long.