A mystery that slowly culminates at the very close, Exotica is a movie I have been meaning to see for a long time.
A favourite theme of mine is the way men project their ideas of what a woman is onto women, and the conflicts which arise from the clash between fantasy and reality.
Set primarily in the titular strip club, Exotica is a movie about watching, about reflections and what lies beneath the surface, and about the ways we process and remediate trauma, emotions and memories.
The first scene is illustrative of the assumption the movie is dismantling: Thomas Pinto (Don McKellar) being watched through a one-way mirror while border control agents try to draw conclusions from his appearance.
The pleasure of the movie is that it does not show its hand, gradually revealing its mysteries - as Egoyan himself has stated - rather like one of the club’s strippers.
In the lead, Bruce Greenwood is quietly crumbling.
Over the course of his career, Greenwood, while not a star, has a certain persona - inherently, he embodies a certain solidness and integrity.
In the film, that essential element of his presentation is revealed as a facade that the film proceeds to hollow out.
And Greenwood’s Francis is only one of the people hiding their true selves - all the characters are presenting different kinds of fronts.
What initially appears as jealousy and lust turns out to be something else - like Francis, these characters are all dealing with trauma.
They are unable to move on - Francis is caught in a web made up of pieces of his old life - he has his niece Tracey (Sarah Polley) practice music with his daughter’s piano.
He spends nights at the Exotica, paying Christina, a young girl who used to be his daughter’s babysitter, and now performs in a schoolgirl uniform reminiscent of the one his daughter was last seen in.
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Not only is Christina trapped in a version of adolescence, she and Club MC Eric (Elias Koteas) are stuck in their own cycles of replaying the same trauma.
During his initial conversation with Christina, he talks about trying to find an artistic vehicle for his voice. Now he is trapped, using his voice to support others’ desires, including narrating Francis and Christina’s encounters.
Despite the setting, these are characters without desire or lust.
The only character with any kind of sexuality is Thomas, a socially awkward pet store owner, who is only able to meet people via transactions.
Francis does not want to touch Christina because it will break the illusion. When Eric (pretending to be another client of the club) convinced him to touch Christina, the film cuts to an extreme close up of Francis’s family, frozen on grainy video - what he wants but cannot have.
Eric’s narration, which on first viewing comes across as lecherous, comes across as a mediation on lost youth, of time passing, and death.
Eric has a baby with the owner of the club, Zoe (Arsinée Khanjian), which is the result of a contract, not love. In spite of, or addition to, the financial inducement, it seems like he is trying to replace the child who was lost. Elias Koteas is terrific as a man doomed to repeat himself as much as Francis.
At the time, the film was marketed as an erotic thriller, which makes some sense given the success of that genre in the late eighties-early nineties. While very different in mood and intent, Exotica feels like a reaction to the greater frankness and explicitness of North American cinema in the nineties. In this small, intimate story, the film is interested in what we use sex for.
Aspects of the film are odd - Kirshner and Polley’s characters occasionally feel like avatars for the film’s themes - but so is Eric, when we (and Christina) first meet him.
While the dialogue can read as overly studied, it fits the characters: ultimately they are all artists, with talents and skills they try to use.
I do wonder how the movie is affected on the re-watch. On first viewing, it is slow unfolding was engrossing. On second viewing, there is something sadder, watching these characters trapped in a loop.
The film is also about the limits of perception - Francis was imprisoned because the police had a narrative about him and his motive - the loss of self and agency.
It is a tribute to the movie’s sphinx-like nature that its final scene still feels like it is holding something back.
The movie ends on a flashback of Francis talking to Christina as he drives her home from babysitting his daughter. In an ironic echo of their present relationship, Francis ends the conversation with a financial transaction.
I am struck by the way Egoyan’s camera lingers on Francis as watches Christina walk toward her house. What is behind his gaze? Concern? Fear for her future? An unspoken desire? A need to help someone else as his own life spirals out of control?
I have watched a few of Atom Egoyan’s movies before, Where the Truth Lies and Chloe, and none of them left me as fascinated as Exotica. Neither stuck with me, but watching Exotica feels like finally solving a puzzle.
Where the Truth Lies feels like the build up to an underwhelming revelation, while Chloe is a straightforward thriller that feels completely adrift. Exotica feels like a filmmaker completely synced to their work, and builds toward its conclusion deliberately and with a sense of tension which is not tied to familiar conventions.
Part of its success is Mychael Danna’s score - influenced by Indian music - consists of a central, repeating motif, that is both evocative of the fantasy of the club and the faux fantasy of the musical genre that shares its name.
Terrific.
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