Exotica

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.

I rented this movie after a friend told me about it. I was about half way through when I decided to use a new rule of thumb I had just made up for this movie: if I've watched half the movie and still have no idea what the plot is then it goes out the window.

A very exotic film on all levels. A film which intertwines it's story together and brings all of it's characters together as they all have something in common in some way. From tragic to heart wrenching, Exotica is a film that displays the nature of who we are .

Interesting plot (perharps too), the actors made their best, the music is awful, some scenes not very realistic. But as i said in the summary the intentions are god, no violence, no unnecessary sex... I don't understand why i should write ten lines when i could express my self in five, so i repeat: Interesting plot (perharps too), the actors made their best, the music is awful, some scenes not very realistic. But as i said in the summary the intentions are god, no violence, no unnecessary sex. I don't understand why i should write ten lines when i could express my self in five. Anyway i gave five to this film because the director tried at least to communicate something and not just make some divertisement. I din't know him, now i'll check for others, but i can't recommend this one. sorry.

Mirimax's ad campaign for this film made it seem an unlikely twin to "Showgirls" and through this many people doubtlessly got duped into renting what they thought would be one of those, ahem, "legit" * flicks. What they popped into the VCR was a wonderful post-modern film. Atom Egoyan is a talented director who uses his stories and scenes to weave something like a dream into a mind. At the end, confused and hungry, the mind finds its answer, like a maze--only infinitely complicated. This film is wonderful because it refuses to condemn or judge. There is no moral resolution, there is only life. Rotten and stuck in a maze the characters deal with their loss but never stop living. It's not so heart-warming...just true. And that is truly wonderful. All in all, however, a film that seems to hone the skills that made "The Sweet Hereafter" one of the best unheard of films of 1997. Put on your thinking cap and see it--it's not the garbage the cover promises.

One learns about a tormented man here, without getting a satisfactory explanation of the cause of his torment, or a resolution, or anything that is deeper than the tormented surface - something that could have made it into a good art movie. On the other hand, the man's motivation is too clearly, too directly given, and there is a relatively heavy-handed use of music to signal the characters' emotions - too reminiscent of traditional Hollywoodian films. And the way all the threads are (forced to be) connected together makes the film fail from both points of view. Egoyan has made much better movies than this (e.g. Calendar).