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REVISITING ATOM EGOYAN'S EXOTICA: SEX AND VOYEURISM
MetroNews Canada
June 6 2014
By Colin McNeil Metro
Atom Egoyan is the poster boy for highbrow Canadian film.
The critically acclaimed director from Victoria has picked up hardware
at the Toronto International Film Festival and Cannes, been nominated
for two Oscars, and even managed to take home a trophy from the Adult
Video News Awards -- despite never having made a pornographic movie.
He's practically a national treasure, right up there with the Rockies,
and Mr. Dressup.
And you might say Exotica is the poster child for Atom Egoyan.
Hailed as his breakthrough film, Exotica all about one of the
director's favourite themes: Voyeurism.
It's the interlocking story of a meek-mannered animal smuggler being
watched by Canada Customs, an obsessively lovesick strip-club DJ who
leers at his former lover from the booth, an exotic dancer who gets
paid to be stared at, and the man who comes to watch her every other
night of his life.
Tying these wayward threads together is the case of a young girl
murdered years ago.
Filled with Canadian character actors whose faces you may recognize
but whose names you may not, it's a film that loves to deny. Like
the eponymous strip club itself, Exotica is filled with the promise
of sex and sexuality, but delivers none. Despite being set almost
entirely in a place where women undress for money, there are no Show
Girls-style cheap thrills here.
In fact the club itself is downright anti-erotic. Just watch this
scene, where dancer Christina (Mia Kirshner) performs to Leonard
Cohen's melancholy tune Everybody Knows, while the surrounding
cast leer:
With a sexed-up advertising campaign from Miramax at odds with
the true nature of the film (it was initially billed as a steamy,
sexually charged erotic thriller), Exotica proved a hit.
Always footnoted as Egoyan's breakthrough masterpiece, it won him
prizes and praise at 13 international film festivals (including
Cannes), and seven Genie Awards. It also more than doubled its
$2-million budget in box office revenue.
For an independent Canadian production making its way south of the
border, that's pretty damn good. As Egoyan himself says in this early
1990s interview with TVO's Steve Paikin, "It's difficult for Canadian
films to kind of make that crossover, but I feel that this is a film
that can do it, if any film can."
Before Exotica, he'd made films that definitely did not make that
crossover to the U.S. and international markets. Egoyan spent much
of the 1980s making short films with titles like After Grad with Dad
and Peep Show, supporting himself in between by directing episodes
of The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Born to Armenian parents and raised in Canada, he rediscovered his
roots in 2002 with Ararat, an emotionally powerful film about the
1915 Armenian genocide in Turkey.
His favourite themes and techniques are well documented: A jigsaw
non-linear narrative, emotional detachment or alienation, unmistakably
Canadian landscapes, and video voyeurism. He's been compared to David
Cronenberg -- perhaps the only Canadian director with more notoriety,
clout and infamy than Egoyan himself -- with the Canadian Encyclopedia
citing both directors' "clinical detachment, expositional minimalism
and resolute intellectualism."
Golden boy begins to tarnish
There comes a time when even gold loses its lustre, and the same is
starting to be said for the golden boy of Canadian cinema.
Atom Egoyan is currently in the midst of a critical downward spiral,
with his latest film, 2014's The Captive, being his biggest flop to
date. The child abduction thriller was mercilessly torn apart when it
premiered at Cannes, with reviewers calling it "contrived and fatally
unconvincing" and a "one-star turkey" that insulted the audience's
intelligence. Ouch.
The Captive is just the latest in a string of films that have been
perceived by many critics as less than the Egoyan's best. A parade
of recent critical failures - including Devil's Knot, Adoration and
Where Truth Lies - have some wondering if the golden boy has "lost
his way for good."
http://metronews.ca/scene/1057089/atom-egoyan-canadian-films-golden-boy-no-more/
MetroNews Canada
June 6 2014
By Colin McNeil Metro
Atom Egoyan is the poster boy for highbrow Canadian film.
The critically acclaimed director from Victoria has picked up hardware
at the Toronto International Film Festival and Cannes, been nominated
for two Oscars, and even managed to take home a trophy from the Adult
Video News Awards -- despite never having made a pornographic movie.
He's practically a national treasure, right up there with the Rockies,
and Mr. Dressup.
And you might say Exotica is the poster child for Atom Egoyan.
Hailed as his breakthrough film, Exotica all about one of the
director's favourite themes: Voyeurism.
It's the interlocking story of a meek-mannered animal smuggler being
watched by Canada Customs, an obsessively lovesick strip-club DJ who
leers at his former lover from the booth, an exotic dancer who gets
paid to be stared at, and the man who comes to watch her every other
night of his life.
Tying these wayward threads together is the case of a young girl
murdered years ago.
Filled with Canadian character actors whose faces you may recognize
but whose names you may not, it's a film that loves to deny. Like
the eponymous strip club itself, Exotica is filled with the promise
of sex and sexuality, but delivers none. Despite being set almost
entirely in a place where women undress for money, there are no Show
Girls-style cheap thrills here.
In fact the club itself is downright anti-erotic. Just watch this
scene, where dancer Christina (Mia Kirshner) performs to Leonard
Cohen's melancholy tune Everybody Knows, while the surrounding
cast leer:
With a sexed-up advertising campaign from Miramax at odds with
the true nature of the film (it was initially billed as a steamy,
sexually charged erotic thriller), Exotica proved a hit.
Always footnoted as Egoyan's breakthrough masterpiece, it won him
prizes and praise at 13 international film festivals (including
Cannes), and seven Genie Awards. It also more than doubled its
$2-million budget in box office revenue.
For an independent Canadian production making its way south of the
border, that's pretty damn good. As Egoyan himself says in this early
1990s interview with TVO's Steve Paikin, "It's difficult for Canadian
films to kind of make that crossover, but I feel that this is a film
that can do it, if any film can."
Before Exotica, he'd made films that definitely did not make that
crossover to the U.S. and international markets. Egoyan spent much
of the 1980s making short films with titles like After Grad with Dad
and Peep Show, supporting himself in between by directing episodes
of The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Born to Armenian parents and raised in Canada, he rediscovered his
roots in 2002 with Ararat, an emotionally powerful film about the
1915 Armenian genocide in Turkey.
His favourite themes and techniques are well documented: A jigsaw
non-linear narrative, emotional detachment or alienation, unmistakably
Canadian landscapes, and video voyeurism. He's been compared to David
Cronenberg -- perhaps the only Canadian director with more notoriety,
clout and infamy than Egoyan himself -- with the Canadian Encyclopedia
citing both directors' "clinical detachment, expositional minimalism
and resolute intellectualism."
Golden boy begins to tarnish
There comes a time when even gold loses its lustre, and the same is
starting to be said for the golden boy of Canadian cinema.
Atom Egoyan is currently in the midst of a critical downward spiral,
with his latest film, 2014's The Captive, being his biggest flop to
date. The child abduction thriller was mercilessly torn apart when it
premiered at Cannes, with reviewers calling it "contrived and fatally
unconvincing" and a "one-star turkey" that insulted the audience's
intelligence. Ouch.
The Captive is just the latest in a string of films that have been
perceived by many critics as less than the Egoyan's best. A parade
of recent critical failures - including Devil's Knot, Adoration and
Where Truth Lies - have some wondering if the golden boy has "lost
his way for good."
http://metronews.ca/scene/1057089/atom-egoyan-canadian-films-golden-boy-no-more/