Family Viewing 1987

Van, Aidan Tierney frequently visits his grandmother Armen Selma Keklikian in a cramped, run-down nursing home, a place that feels crowded with quiet worries and small acts of care. Armen shares a ward with Aline’s mother Jeanne Sabourin, a connection that binds their days in a tense, uneasy orbit. Aline, Arsine Khanjian, works as a phone sex worker and cannot earn enough to move her mother to a better facility, a reality that shapes her choices and her growing bond with Van. The two of them begin to know each other through routine visits, slow conversations, and the shared sense that the nursing home is a liminal space where every gesture carries weight.

Van’s family history compounds the strain: his mother Rose Sarkisyan disappeared years ago, and his father, Stan David Hemblen, is reluctant to engage with Armen or to face the past. When Stan does visit, the encounter feels awkward and evasive, a stark contrast to Van’s persistent, hopeful efforts to keep his grandmother close and cared for. Van also tries to enlist Sandra, Stan’s live-in partner Gabrielle Rose, to help him persuade his father, but Sandra resists involvement, offering only a quiet, uncertain presence in the background of the family drama.

A troubling discovery unsettles Van: Stan has been re-using old home movies to tape himself with Sandra, an invasion of privacy and a betrayal that shakes Van to his core. In response, Van decides to swap the tapes for blank ones to halt the exploitation, and he brings the altered recordings to Armen to show the truth behind the family’s façade and the harm being done behind closed doors. The tension only grows when Aline receives a client’s invitation to travel to Montreal; she asks Van to look after her mother in her absence. Aline’s mother, believing Aline has abandoned her, overdoses and dies, an act that amplifies the fragility of every life tangled in this family.

In a desperate bid to protect Armen from exposure, Van switches the two elderly women again—making Armen appear to have died—and tells his father that Armen has died, staging a funeral for Aline’s mother before Aline even returns. The ruse is risky, but it buys time and reshapes the possibilities for Armen’s future. Aline agrees to shelter Armen in her flat if they share the rent, and Van agrees to move in as well. The arrangement brings new stability: Van’s father helps him land a hotel job, and Aline also finds work there, embedding them in a bustling, communal space where the past can begin to loosen its grip.

As the tapes continue to haunt them, Van uncovers another layer of harm: images of his own mother being tied up by Stan during their intimate encounters. Stan, realizing the tapes have been compromised, hires a private detective to recover them. With the detective’s help, he tracks down the room where Armen is being kept at the hotel, intensifying the peril. To avoid capture, Van reports Armen as a homeless woman staying in an unused storage area of the hotel, and medical personnel move Armen to a different, safer nursing home.

In the end, the fragile bond among these wounded lives holds steady for a moment as Van and Aline visit Armen and find her sitting and talking with Van’s mother. The scene offers a quiet, hopeful note—an uneasy reconciliation of family secrets, love, and the tenuous care that binds them all.