It’s an aggressively Egoyan film.  But given how didactic it is it ends up reading closer to self parody.  The way the film withholds feels more aimed at narrative contrivance (and in the case of some other late period films satisfying genre conventions) rather than as a way to undergird the emotional architecture of his best films. It's missing the force that the images held in his best works. In earlier Egoyan, video had texture and menace; you could feel the estrangement. Here they seem purely functional. All that said I think his failures are still worth watching.

This was always going to be a difficult film for me to connect with, given its all encompassing nihilism. I can appreciate the formal rigor of Bresson’s style but the idea that the world is lost and that the only option humans have is suicide just obviously is not one that resonates with my world view. Ultimately I prefer First Reformed where Schrader at least offers us the possibility of grace. 

I do have this nagging feeling though that perhaps my reading of the film may be overly simplistic.

Forced Ben to watch this.  Brit’s have no excuse for not knowing this lol.  On this viewing I just kept thinking about how criminally unheralded Lesley Sharp’s performance is.  On some level I get it because David Thewlis’s performance I think is amongst the best of all time, but it’s kind of crazy how little anyone talks about her to me.