Atom Egoyan
This coming Wednesday, June 28th, at 8 PM, the George Eastman House will be showing the movie Exotica in the Dryden Theatre. That is a great movie that not a lot of people seem to know about. If you look at the DVD cover, you’ll probably get the wrong idea about the movie. It’s not some soft-core flick.
The movie centers around a strip club. The two main characters are a stripper who dresses like a Catholic schoolgirl and a man who frequents the club and always gets dances from her. I know how that sounds, but trust me, this isn’t some late night Cinemax movie. There’s about as much nudity in it as when Tony goes to visit the Bada Bing on The Sopranos. I don’t even consider it an erotic movie. The tone is completely one of loneliness. All of the characters are lonely and feeling pain about something.
The other main characters include the pregnant owner of the club, the DJ, and a gay pet store owner who’s completely unrelated to the club but ends up getting involved by the end of the movie. I wish I could say more than that, but the whole beauty of the film is in how you gradually learn who these characters are and why they do the things they do.
The film is written and directed by Atom Egoyan. I don’t know what it is about his style, but somehow he can create scenes that just stick with me. I first rented Exotica about ten years ago. Over the years I would forget much of the details, but I’d still have a clear image in my head of what the pet store owner looked and acted like, how the DJ would sound when he was talking into the microphone, the final scene of the movie (which was a flashback), little things like that. I bought a used copy of the DVD not too long ago and I have watched it pretty recently, but if I’m in town (there’s a possibility I won’t be) I plan on seeing it at the Dryden anyway. With my membership, it’s only $4.
I’ve seen two other Egoyan films: Felicia’s Journey and The Sweet Hereafter. The Sweet Hereafter is just amazing. It’s his most well-known work, but I had no idea when I rented it what it was about. I just knew that it was the same writer and director as Exotica and that it had been nominated for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay Oscars. I hadn’t seen trailers for it. I didn’t know who starred in it. Nothing. There’s a reason I haven’t given you links to IMDB for these movies - because I think they give away too much of the movie.
So because that’s the way I experienced it, I’m not even going to tell you what it’s about. I couldn’t really describe why I like it so much anyway. But like with Exotica, it just stuck with me afterwards. The next day, I watched it all over again with the commentary track. The track featured Egoyan and Russell Banks, the author of the novel that it was based on. That is way cool to have the original author commenting along with the screenwriter & director. The DVD also had some interviews with both of them, and showed Banks reading a couple of passages from the novel.
OK, I’ll mention just a tiny tiny tidbit to illustrate something, but no spoiler here. There’s a bad event that happens in this small Canadian town. You learn about it early in the film. Everyone talks about it, we see how it affected people, we see through flashbacks some things that happened before it, but for a good portion of the movie, we don’t see the event itself. There are times they do a flashback and you think you might see it, but you don’t. Then at one point they flashback and because of how it’s set up, you know that this is it, we’re going to see it this time. I can’t really explain why, but that moment when I realized that, it sent chills up my spine. I got chills just thinking about it as I was typing this. While that scene progressed, my heart was pounding. I almost wanted to say “Please don’t show me this”. I’m sure some of you will see the movie and think “What’s he talking about? What was the big deal about that?”. I don’t know, I’m just saying that’s how it affected me.
I also want to note that The Sweet Hereafter has nothing to do with strip clubs or anything like that, so if you’re turned off by that aspect of Exotica, you don’t have to worry about that with this movie.
But I highly encourage anyone that hasn’t seen Exotica to check it out this Wednesday, or rent it on DVD if you can’t make it to the theater. If you don’t like it, feel free to let me hear it, but I won’t be refunding your money.
Why do I get the feeling everyone’s going to ignore what I’m saying and not go see Exotica? OK fine. Ladies, sorry, I don’t got anything else for ya. Men, forget all that crap I said earlier. Mia Kirshner is hot. There, will that get you to go? Whatever works, just see it already!