Atom Egoyan is probably the most acclaimed Canadian filmmaker who is still a presence in the Canadian film industry -and that is an important distinction. Where bigger name directors like James Cameron, Ivan Reitman, Denis Villeneuve, and even David Cronenberg have all gone south of the border for their art, Egoyan has largely stayed at home and his films have stayed Canadian -to the point he even adapted an American novel set in Texas to small-town British Columbia and got his biggest success out of it. The Sweet Hereafter is still often regarded as one of, if not the greatest Canadian movie, the Canadian identity of which is so integral to it, especially in light of its disturbing prescience in retrospect.
But the film that is considered his first big break came three years before The Sweet Hereafter. And Exotica is a particularly interesting movie as well, examining a culture of sex through the lens of the strip club scene of Toronto. It follows a CRA auditor played by Bruce Greenwood who seems to be filling the hole in his life left by a lost daughter with frequent visits to the Exotica strip club where he cultivates a relationship with his favourite dancer Christina (Mia Kirshner).
Unlike the recent Hustlers, which portrayed this industry from within, Egoyan keeps the audience at a relative distance; and in observing that world from the outside we’re privy to this larger theatre of objectification, toxic masculinity, and sexual psychology. It’s notable that Christina’s identity at Exotica is as ‘the schoolgirl’, that she herself is quite young (Kirshner was only eighteen when this was filmed), and that the personality she puts on when with clients is usually infantilized or ignorant. And of course for this she’s not only popular with Greenwood’s Francis, but other men including the club DJ (Elias Koteas), who once dated her and continues to assert a great deal of pathological control over her -even going so far as to enviously conspire to get Francis kicked out.
Concerning Francis, that intersection of sex and loss and loneliness is fascinating too. He carries a lot of grief with him, both for his daughter, and for his wife who died in a car accident while having an affair with his brother (Victor Garber) -whose paralyses is a constant reminder of that adultery. The film dares you to ponder on why he (or any man) would turn to a strip club in light of this, why he’s so infatuated with Christina of all the strippers, why he pays his niece (Sarah Polley) to ‘babysit’ his empty home when he’s off at Exotica. There’s no actual sex in the film, merely voyeurism and a lot of it -that appears to be what Francis wants as a replacement for the human connection he no longer has. Of course, it comes out he does have a precedent connection with Christina, adding another disturbing layer for dissection.
Sex also plays a substantial role in the subplot centering on pet shopkeeper Thomas played by Don McKellar, who Francis is auditing -and who has been illegally smuggling rare macaw eggs into Canada. The most interesting scenes with him though involve him going to the opera and picking up men (his Exotica it seems) using free tickets he acquired as an excuse to pay them for sexual favours. Sexual transaction is a notable theme of the film, both Thomas and Francis pay for some form of sexual gratification, but only for Francis is contact forbidden. Egoyan and his audience want to know what is so alluring about that?
Criterion Recommendation: Firecrackers (2018)
Another Canadian film about toxic masculinity and objectification, Jasmin Mozaffari’s Firecrackers is a terrific story of two girls’ desperate attempts to escape their repressive small town. An astoundingly accurate portrait of both the geography and attitude of many an isolated Canadian community, it may be one of the most chilling representations of how critically ingrained conservatism cut off from the larger world manifests a harsh rejection of female and non-heteronormative agency to harrowing degrees. Mozafarri’s direction is tight and the performances from Michaela Kurimsky and Karena Evans are terrific, as they grapple with an environment that is constantly holding them hostage. It’s not an uplifting movie, indeed Mozafarri wants you to be furious this kind of culture has thrived into the twenty-first century; but it is an important one, and Canada could use more space in the Criterion Collection anyway.
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