Exotica (1995)

With a cast of familiar faces this thriller/drama goes nowhere fast in fact I'm not sure it goes anywhere at all. Lifeless, dull, ridiculously ungripping and considering half the film is set in a strip joint not even visually appealing! The last time I was this bored watching a film it was the critically acclaimed Inception (2010) the film that bred a new type of pseudo intellectual movie fan with the moniker of "If you don't like it you didn't understand it" Well I understood that over-convoluted mess and I still didn't like it.Exotica brings nothing to the table, not even a young Mia Kirchner stripping in a school girl outfit could turn this embarrassment around.

From the very opening shot, Exotica gives its viewers a taste of what's to come. A hypnotizing pan while Mychael Danna's "Something Hidden" plays melodiously in a somber yet jazzy tone. This atmosphere carries on as the film introduces entirely different characters going through various challenges in their life—Thomas is a man who tries to find a living by owning and handling a shop with exotic animals, and is thereafter found watching productions of Romeo and Juliet as if he's looking for someone, and Francis is a seemingly ordinary accountant who, mostly every night, visits this high-class strip club called 'Exotica' to exchange conversation with a stripper dressed like a school girl named Christina.The film is like a tease, there are quite a lot of mysterious subplots unfolding around the characters, but it never bothers answering any of them. It is a puzzle that leaves everything up to the viewer to connect its strange pieces; people view it as a murder mystery, but I view it more as a testament to the mystery of human nature. It is very much well established from the start that these characters seem to have so few in common, but there's this potential gravity that seems to pull them together, and that is the mystery the film tries to exhibit. How the human nature is unorthodox, and how everything feels so arbitrary until the lives of two people intersect, and in this case, in a classy and jazzy Toronto strip club.There are six main players in this story—Thomas, Francis, Christina, Eric, Zoe, and Tracey. Everyone is caught up with their own lives at the start until strange little coincidences mysteriously put each in their own respective relativity from each other. The entire film has a very eerie tone of dolefulness, as if there is something going on behind the curtain. This is emphasized by the two-way mirror, and as the film progresses, it gradually reveals characters backgrounds and histories thought to be concealed, and by the time it reaches its third act, the artfulness of its mystery hit me in a profound manner as I realized the subjective reasons on why characters did some eccentric decisions during the rising action. Again, this is all theory, as the film never fully gives any answer, but the thought is there; the idea of how a past tragedy can creep up on one like a smooth finger tracing one's spine, how the idea of sex and paid prostitution can never heal the scars of the past, and how prejudice can quickly lead to anger, and soon, murder.The way this film deals with its themes of loneliness are handled maturely with elements of trying to replace that feeling with physical pleasures. Everyone might seem ordinary at the start, but once it reaches the end, it shows how everyone is scarred, how everyone has dealt with tragedy and is trying to cope with it by trying to live life's entertainment. Each of these characters has something to say, and the grayness of each just astounds me. From the seemingly young and innocent girl to the older but experienced DJ, these set of characters is a prime example of excellent characterization bounded by human nature, not human caricatures.At what at first seems like a murder mystery-themed Showgirls turns into something deep and sincere. Exotica is certainly not what I expected it to be, but in the best way possible. It explores something hidden, a plethora of mature themes affecting a group of seemingly unrelated people while still being in that atmosphere of surreal jazziness and peculiarity as if there's something not right, as if there's something out of place. The entire film is like an artwork waiting to be interpreted; every single detail is in there but merely judging it at a first glance won't do, as single-handed prejudice leads to more bewilderment that spirals down into a rabbit hole of hypnotic dancing accompanied by Danna's smooth and unfurling tones of a gloomy and murderous ambiance of something-not-right in the air.

In the camera, the score, the acting, the overall air, this is worthy of Lynch and Kieslowski. It exhibits the same soft touch across all these elements. It has latenight moods I love, the languorous hum of noir mystery. I'm happy to be introduced to this filmmaker's world for the first time.But it also has something I value even more than how appearances seranade me, it has passage inside to where the formations of life begin - the surge that moves the worlds we inhabit and manifests as self, emotions and anxieties.It's about a man who looks stricken when we first see him. He goes to a strip club, a young girl in a school outfit dances for him. We're led to believe that it's simply desire, perhaps concealing a tiredness about life that has seen its best days go that he drowns at nights. It goes much deeper. There's another young girl that he drives home to her father at nights, no explanations given. We assume some unethical business. We assume a burden with her father that is not spoken out loud and just hangs between them.There's a club deejay who announces the girls as surrogate director of the show, a former lover of the girl's; he introduces her on stage as sexually mysterious, asking what is it that draws us to her, what kind of reprieve is this desire for her looking for?This along with everything else we see through the looking glass of concealed identity, amalgamated in the club (named the same as the film itself no less) as a space where performance is exchanged from behind guises. The place is marvelous, a cavernous hall with palm trees and a hushed, tropical atmosphere - but of course that's only the seductive illusion, the lush foliage probably plastic.And there's the bookish guy we first saw at airport security, a very reserved person who it's like every day is just something that slips through the fingers for him. He's running a store with tropical animals, strange and exotic beings but they're merely kept inside glass, artificially framed nature. He goes to the ballet - artificially framed nature - hoping for intimacy on the way out, unsure.Another visual segment takes place in a green field, a stroll with the dancer girl and this as getting to know her, falling for her.All this is like swimming in slow, languorous waters, so when the different layers are made to align, we break the surface to come up for air and painful clarity. All these people as trapped in vistas of their own self, their nature artificially confined by hurt. It's touching her - shattering the allowed boundaries of performance - that breaks the spell and releases first one, then the others.It's all been about this narrator who has allowed himself to remain confined in a performance, a chimera of the mind - reliving the hurt both with one girl at the club, and with the second at home. Now we are where everything comes into being. It's one of the great post noir works I know.Noir Meter: 2/4 | Neo-noir or post noir? Post

Egoyan's 'Exotica' is about emotionally isolated people who try to connect with each other. With every interaction between the characters there are symbolic barriers either in the form of finance, two way mirrors and social rules. But once this barrier is seized (symbolically) in the form of physical contact like the touch between Thomas and Chrissy and between Frances and Eric they form a connection. Egoyan does not resolve the 'problems' by showing the characters healed but instead what he demonstrates is that this human connection has brought change within them.In contrast, we also see how the characters once connected but now have drifted apart like Frances and Kristina or Zoe and Eric or Thomas and the officer. Explaining it more would be giving away too much of the story. While we see all these characters struggle to connect, there is Zoe who tries to keep things together but she too is sitting behind a one-way mirror. Egoyan uses plenty of symbolism and simple storytelling just isn't his style. He uses a rather suggestive approach. What he does in 'Exotica' is reveal very slowly.Moving at a slow pace, the film does 'test' the viewer's patience but there are a lot of subtle things happening and one has to observe closely to see that things aren't what they seem on the surface. There's a film-noire type quality to it. A lot of darkness is used, both symbolically and actually. The dialogues are simple but profound in depth. The haunting soundtrack gives the film a seductive and sensual edge.The performances are superb all the way. This is the first time I see Bruce Greenwood turn in a decent performance. Elias Koteas and Don McKellar are first rate. A very young Sarah Polley shows what potential she has. Arsinée Khanjian is terrific. Mia Kirschner blends excellently blends sensuality, pain, fragility and kindness into Chrissy.'Exotica' is not everyone's kind of film. Some may find its theme too dark and too intense but it's a film that isn't afraid to reveal, suggest and challenge the viewer.