• Egoyan’s Exotica is Altman’s Nashville or Sayles’ Matewan– except for this ensemble mosaic has a jungle “exotic”-themed strip club meeting place as its linking device instead of a city

Egoyan’s Exotica is Altman’s Nashville or Sayles’ Matewan– except for this ensemble mosaic has a jungle “exotic”-themed strip club meeting place as its linking device instead of a city

  • Egoyan’s sixth film- and strongest to date in my study
  • It begins with these slow tracking shots during the titles, and then when we get into the club, Egoyan slowly pans the camera showing a line up of men’s faces and women’s posteriors—but he’s not interested in seedy crime, sex, or even lust—he’s interested in peeling back the pain or past events that brought these characters to this point here. It is a perfect shot—down to the speed of the camera movement setting the pace

it isn’t lust that Egoyan is interested in– it is pain

  • The club has its own visual design theme (which is part of the film of course) but it is just one of the meticulously designed green sets—Egoyan infuses a believable color design throughout like Kieslowski was doing with the colors trilogy at the same time as Egoyan (Blue is 1993, White and Red the same year as Exotica here in 1994). Egoyan did it with red and green in The Adjuster in 1991—but here it is just green—the stalls in the bathroom at the club, the exaggerated (almost luminescently green) fish tanks in the pet shot. Bruce Greenwood is just standing behind a random green backdrop on the balcony second story of an apartment. Koteas, has green weights (I’ve never in my life seen green weights) and a green sleeping bag and so on. Stunning work.

Egoyan infuses a believable color design throughout– the stalls in the bathroom at the club (above), the exaggerated (almost luminescently green) fish tanks in the pet shot

Bruce Greenwood is just standing behind a random green backdrop on the balcony second story of an apartment

  • The Leonard Cohen song (repeated) is perfect for the haunting dance by Mia Kirshner’s Christina character— wounded
  • Koteas’ character is just overcome with jealously- a theme in nearly all of Egoyan’s work—it is worth noting that Egoyan is influenced by Cronenberg (both Canadian auteurs, using video in much of their work and some of Egoyan’s previous films have overt tips of the cap to Cronenberg)— but here—Cronenberg will pick up Koteas’ as an actor playing a dark character (with a perversion) a few years later in Cronenberg’s masterful Crash (1996)
  • Egoyan has these intercut flashbacks scenes of a missing person search in a green (yes) field—a formal connective tissue like Calendar the previous year— it not only makes for a fascinating narrative structure—but gives us cause to the effect of these rich characters and their hangups

Egoyan has these intercut flashbacks scenes of a missing person search in a green (yes) field—a formal connective tissue like Calendar the previous year— it not only makes for a fascinating narrative structure—but gives us cause to the effect of these rich characters and their hangups

  • A Must-See film