Calendar

After photographing a series of churches in his native Armenia for a calendar commission, a man looks back on the trip to retrace the disintegration of his relationship with his then partner. In Canada, a year later, the glossy prints look down from the walls on his loneliness, while his ex's occasional telephone calls go miserably unanswered. A certain piquancy (for those in the know) is gained from the Armenian-born Egoyan's casting of himself as the lovelorn lensman and spouse Khanjian as the woman he left behind. Egoyan filters his customary themes - the difficulties of personal communication, the relationship between emotional lives and video technology - in a film which incisively balances metaphor and awkward realism, while shuttling nimbly through time and space, between celluloid and video formats.