Guest of Honour
Kino Lorber | Release Date (Streaming): July 10, 2020 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
53
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 13 Critic Reviews
Positive:
3
Mixed:
10
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyJul 10, 2020
Guest of Honour, a knotty memory play and character study that, not unsurprisingly, screened at last fall’s Toronto fest, is a gratifyingly solid work that benefits from first-rate performers and a knowing location nose for the scruffier corners of Hamilton, Ontario. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorSep 10, 2019
The restaurant story is wonderfully taut, with Egoyan in full control of his always extravagant imagery. Read full review
67
The PlaylistStephanie WattsSep 9, 2019
While the non-linear structure of Guest of Honour makes for a more thrilling watch than if it had played out chronologically, the story can be uneven and unsatisfying in places. Read full review
60
The New York TimesBen KenigsbergJul 9, 2020
The movie is consistently seductive, and it makes lovely use of a composition by Shannon Graham that is woven into Veronica’s work as a music teacher. But several story shortcuts . . . ensure that the characters’ anguish feels more constructed than organic. Read full review
60
CineVueChristopher MachellJun 18, 2020
Buried underneath the convolutions, the mistaking of melodramatic sensationalism over psychological reality, there really is something of a real emotional centre that just about makes enduring the rest worth it. Read full review
60
The GuardianXan BrooksSep 26, 2019
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. Read full review
58
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 9, 2019
A riveting but utterly ridiculous melodrama about the burden of guilt and the value of bunny shit, Atom Egoyan’s “Guest of Honour” layers one absurd turn on top of another with the confidence of a veteran architect, and yet — even at its most perversely entertaining — this very unpredictable movie only feels as if it’s working in spite of itself. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloJul 7, 2020
Every so often, Egoyan takes another stab at the offbeat, achronological, weirdly intimate mode in which he originally specialized, but the spark never quite fully ignites. Guest Of Honour, his latest effort, is decidedly that sort of low-wattage Egoyan classic, serving up familiar preoccupations and structural curlicues—minus any inspiration. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreJun 29, 2020
That makes Guest of Honour more unsatisfying than bad, more polished than it could be in many ways, but sloppy in ones that count — namely the script. It’s a textbook case of a “fascinating failure.” Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 9, 2019
Guest of Honour feels like a failed attempt to tame the unwieldy story of a complicated novel. But in fact it's an original screenplay, which means Egoyan has gone out of his way to create the overly fussy structure, perhaps in a bid to lend the psychologically wobbly drama some weight. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawJun 11, 2020
Thewlis keeps the film from sinking completely: the haunted, unhappy man resigned to his unjust burden of guilt and shame. Read full review
40
VarietyGuy LodgeSep 9, 2019
At once overplotted and under-reasoned, hysterical and stiffly earnest, Guest of Honour is finally one of those strenuously diagrammatic mysteries in which everything notionally connects, which isn’t quite the same as everything making even marginal emotional sense. Read full review
40
Screen DailyLee MarshallSep 9, 2019
Egoyan is so impatient to cut through to the emotional truth that he asks us to take on board a series of lazy contrivances that will test even the most forgiving viewer. Read full review
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