Exotica
I honestly have no idea why I thought Atom Egoyan’s “Exotica” was a terrific film when I watched it after it came out in 1995. I know I responded to Mia Kirshner’s Christina as an exotic dancer in a schoolgirl uniform, probably because that was the image most pushed by Miramax’s marketing of the film, even though it really doesn’t even begin to hint at the movie Egoyan made. (And was more motivated, we can discern now, by the fact that Harvey Weinstein was a creep who probably sexually harassed Kirshner.) Now, it’s easier for me to see why “Exotica” is a terrific movie, and why I can connect to it emotionally.
“Exotica” is set in a high-class strip club named Exotica primarily, but that is only part of the drama for Egoyan. In it is where Bruce Greenwood’s Francis, an auditor, comes every other night to watch, and feel a connection, with Christina. She does her dance, set to a Leonard Cohen song, and then he buys private time with her and his table. There’s a sadness we sense within the two that only gets compounded when we see them together, and an obvious connection beyond their interactions at Exotica, which are strictly above board. Francis is not there for arousal, but just to try and feel something; we only learn later why he is so hollow. Meanwhile, in his day job, he is currently auditing a pet store run by Thomas (Don McKellar), who has secrets of his own, which he is not too keen of Francis discovering. The final pieces of the puzzle are Zoe (Arsinée Khanjian), who owns the club; Eric (Elias Koteas), who is the DJ, and feels like he has a connection to Christina, as well; and Tracey (Sarah Polley), the daughter of Francis’s best friend (Victor Garber), whom Francis hires every Thursday to babysit, and play the piano he bought for his daughter.
The story unfolds in the same elliptical, mesmerizing way Egoyan is fond of, not telling us all of the threads of the story until his cinematic narrative requires it for its emotional impact. His best, most heartbreaking example of this was his next film after this, “The Sweet Hereafter,” but here, we remain in the dark about the full nature of the story even after we can figure out that the images of Christina and Eric, walking together, in a field are of them as part of a search for Francis’s daughter. “Exotica” is about the emptiness felt by multiple characters as a result of that event, and Zoe, Tracey and Thomas are caught up in the crosshairs of that sense of isolation. There are troubling elements at work in the idea of how Christina dresses while on-stage, and why she continues to dance for Francis that we’ll only understand by the end, and it has nothing to do with the literal transaction we think we’re watching. The truth is, though, that these two need one another in a way only they can understand fully, and when it looks like that connection is severed, it’s understandable why Francis reacts the way he does; for him, it’s another tragedy.
Egoyan is a filmmaker of tremendous cinematic talents, and he uses his collaborators- here, cinematographer Paul Sarossy, production designers Linda Del Rosario and Richard Paris, and composer Mychael Danna- to create an atmosphere that draws us in, and leads us in one direction even as the story leads us in another, which is where his actors take over. Even characters like Thomas, Zoe and Tracey have meaningful things to bring to the story; they aren’t just filler for the story. They each have a part to play in the emotional tragedy we’re watching unfold. Egoyan’s film is so much more than the imagery that has been used to sell it over the years. It’s a painful, but powerful, study in how lost people try to reach for a connection, and it’s haunting drama to watch.
