Exotica
Canada • 1994
Director
#1150Criterion Collection →Synopsis
One of the defining independent films of the 1990s, Atom Egoyan’s mesmerizing international breakthrough EXOTICA takes the conventions of the psychological thriller into bold new territory—unsettling, dreamlike, and empathetic. At the neon-drenched Toronto strip club of the film’s title, a coterie of lost and damaged souls—including a man haunted by grief, a young woman with whom he shares an enigmatic bond, an obsessive emcee, and a smuggler of rare bird eggs—search for redemption as they work through the traumas of their mysteriously interconnected histories in an obsessive cycle of sex, pain, jealousy, and catharsis. Masterfully weaving together past and present, Egoyan constructs a spellbinding narrative puzzle, the full emotional impact of which doesn’t hit until the last piece is in place.
Synopsis
One of the defining independent films of the 1990s, Atom Egoyan’s mesmerizing international breakthrough EXOTICA takes the conventions of the psychological thriller into bold new territory—unsettling, dreamlike, and empathetic. At the neon-drenched Toronto strip club of the film’s title, a coterie of lost and damaged souls—including a man haunted by grief, a young woman with whom he shares an enigmatic bond, an obsessive emcee, and a smuggler of rare bird eggs—search for redemption as they work through the traumas of their mysteriously interconnected histories in an obsessive cycle of sex, pain, jealousy, and catharsis. Masterfully weaving together past and present, Egoyan constructs a spellbinding narrative puzzle, the full emotional impact of which doesn’t hit until the last piece is in place.
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Credits
Crew
DirectorAtom Egoyan
WriterAtom Egoyan
CinematographerPaul Sarossy
ComposerMychael Danna
EditorSusan Shipton
ProducerAtom Egoyan, Camelia Frieberg