Exotica

Like other Egoyan films, this one starts like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle, with the missing pieces added as it progresses. However, it is not the plot that is the most important part of the film but the intriguing interactions between the characters. There's the auditor trying to overcome a painful past while reviewing the books of the gay pet shop owner. Then there's the lesbian strip club owner, the jailbird stripper, and the DJ who completes the volatile love triangle. There is fine acting by the entire cast, with Greenwood and Koteas specially good. The music by Danna perfectly underscores the sense of mystery. Egoyan masterfully balances the plot lines until the pieces come together to form a nearly complete picture - there are still unanswered questions for the viewer to ponder!

Interesting opening credits. Interesting cast. Interesting use of Leonard Cohen's song. But in totality, just above average. The film deals with a set of characters, each having some sort of a psychological problem. Visually strong, but content-wise very weak.

This is my first Egoyan film. He has evidently some talent to make a viewer sit up and expect the unusual. But why populate an entire film with problem characters? That's not reality.

The most interesting bit was actor Don McKellar who plays Thomas is made to look like the director Atom Egoyan, complete with his glasses. Is that an autobiographical touch?

In Toronto is a strip club called the Exotica. Here MC Eric comperes for all the girls including his ex, Christina. One of Christina regular dances is Francis, a tax investigator who has losses and hurts that go back years. The two rely on each other, Francis especially trying to fill the void in his life, however Eric envies this relationship of need and sceptres it. Francis strikes a deal with one of his clients who is breaking the law to take revenge on Eric.

I'm not a huge fan of Egoyan and have often found some of his stuff to be a little inaccessible and occasionally bordering on the pretentious. This is one of my preferred works by him, but that's not to say that it's perfect. The plot here see numerous ill-defined strands that centres not around the club but more around the themes of loss and relationships based on need and baggage. These themes are well brought out even if the back story is pretty weak in most of them. When the strands all come together it isn't a surprise – it has been hinted at all along – but it is a nice low key finish to the tale.

It's hard to judge it as a film because it is too disjointed and abstract to really get into it. It sort of made me want to stand back from it and observe it, rather than get involved – like a picture for example. This distant didn't help me get into the characters but made me watch it from the outside which wasn't as good. The plot is weak but the telling is everything. Egoyan delivers the telling well and weaves an interesting story – told through the characters rather than events.

The characters are delivered well by the actors although some have little to do. Greenwood does very well as Eric and brings a lot out and for my money Koteas is always watchable in anything he does (yes – even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!). Kirshner was too distant for me and I felt that she carried it too long and rarely let emotion touch her. I suppose her character would need to be like that but it stopped me again from accessing the film. McKellar is really a fringe player and the issues with his relationships and his smuggled eggs are basically lost in the mix in a quite frustrating manner. Happily I thought Greenwood and Koteas really held this together and kept my attention.

The film may be flawed and be too distant and cold to be satisfying but Egoyan's telling is good and avoids being arty for art's sake or being pretentious. It is not a fantastic film but it is different and deals with themes not seen often. I found that I appreciated it rather than enjoyed it – that may be the only way in.

I can't remember seeing a film as intriguing, complex, and beautifully photographed as "Exotica." I nearly didn't watch it because the video cover advertized it as an "erotic thriller" and the image on the front is of Mia Kirchner doing her strip-tease bit. Granted, "Exotica" centers around a "gentleman's club" of the same name, but to call this film a simple erotic thriller is to miss out on a lot, on too much.

"Exotica" follows four seemingly unrelated storylines: a man sitting alone at a table in a strip club, another man smuggling exotic parrot eggs into the country ("Exotica" takes place in and around Toronto), two apparent strangers walking in a field of green, and a young girl who plays a flute in an empty house. Egoyan begins with these vastly different puzzle pieces then slowly, inexorably brings them together.

Atom Egoyan is one heck of a masterful director. He is the epicenter of this cinematic symphony that leads carefully from movement to movement until the finale bursts forth in equal measure of catharsis, discovery, and tragedy. Plot to him is like tapestry weaving. He threads narrative, characters, time, and setting in such complicated iterations that one is at once nearly overwhelmed by the intricacy and awed at his skill, a testament to his brilliance as well as his belief that a film-going audience is actually intelligent.

At it's heart, "Exotica" is a tragedy of circumstances. Or better yet, a collision of tragedies of circumstances. Indeed, the film isn't so much about tragedy as it is about those who survive tragedy and the toll a single event can exact for the rest of the lives of those who survive. Exotica, the gentleman's club, serves merely as a focal point where all these individual tragedies radiate to.

Equally haunting in all this is the music. Mychael Danna's score sets the film's tone: dark, "exotic," deceptively simple but savvier than it lets on. Also worthy of note is the music in the club itself, a blend of American house funk and Middle Eastern tones, warbled in Arabic.

I highly recommend this film. Ignore the naked women who sashay from time to time in front of the screen (difficult as that may be at times) in the scenes shot in the club. The really interesting stuff occurs at the margins of the film, as the gulf separating the storylines begin to vanish, and the final scene gives you the keystone to a horrifying clear vision of a sadness so overwhelming that no one in the film escapes unscathed.

Atom Egoyan is a man who will soon win an Academy Award for Best Director in the next few years. After seeing The Sweet Hereafter, I rented Exotica, having heard that it's the best, if not his most signature piece of work- and WHAT a movie- this movie doesn't let you get away with falling asleep, loosing concentration, or anything like that. It makes you THINK, forces you to go scene by scene in a way that is utterly spellbinding. The nudity is a little shocking at first but dealing with its subject matter, for the 'art', so to speak, it's understandable. One of the best films of 1994, without a doubt.

The way that Egoyan intermingles different symbols, cuts back and forth through time, uses repeated imagery, and, at some points, holds back with severely limited dialogue, paints films that capture what it's like to live and remember and be alive. We watch the film, not knowing throughout the whole thing at least 80% of what the hell is going on during the scene, because we understand that the film is a kind of puzzle that'll be pieced together with time. That sense of unknowing- not knowing everything about the characters, not knowing everything, just yet, of what's happening- makes Egoyan's films, and certainly Exotica, some of the most mentally stimulately movies in cinematic history.

All in all Egoyan should of won Best Director in 1997, not Cameron, and this film definately deserved a best screenplay nod in 1994. I'll leave you with a potent piece of dialouge from the film, via Bruce Greedwood and Sarah Polley-

"Tracey- do you ever get the feeling that you didn't ask to be here on earth?"

"What?"

"I mean- no one ASKED that we be brought here. So the question is- who's asking us to stay?"