Exotica (1994)
Directed by Atom Egoyan
In the upscale Toronto strip club Exotica, dancer Christina is visited nightly by the obsessive Francis, a depressed tax auditor. Her ex-boyfriend, the club's MC, Eric, still jealously pines for her even as he introduces her onstage, but Eric is having his own relationship problems with the club's female owner. Thomas, a mysterious pet-shop owner, is about to become unexpectedly involved in their lives.
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What critics compared Exotica to
The Canada-based, Oscar-nominated director Atom Egoyan has plenty of experience with adult dramas about sex, including Exotica (1995) and Where the Truth Lies (2005), and his new Chloe -- which is a remake of the 2003 French film Nathalie -- comes with his usual brand of chilly intelligence and maturity.
In films great ("Exotica") and flawed but watchable ("Where The Truth Lies"), Egoyan isn't afraid to "go there," whether it's depicting sex on-screen, or more daringly, how people really think about sex on-screen.
"Chloe," like his great film " Exotica " (1994), is about sexual attraction confused by financial arrangements.
When that project had been announced, many questioned why Egoyan, who had made a name for himself with such enigmatic and emotionally devastating dramas as “Exotica” and “The Sweet Hereafter,” would want to invest his time and talent in bringing a roman a clef novel from Rupert Holmes, best known for penning the immortal “The Pina Colada Song,” to the big screen and after getting a load of the always turgid and rarely tumescent results, they were still wondering.
With his work on “Exotica” and “Where the Truth Lies,” Egoyan has danced on the sticky floors of sexual fixation before, yet “Chloe” is his most accessible stab at the genre (in fact, the picture is a remake of a 2003 French film).
Few filmmakers have the gift of Atom Egoyan, the Canadian director of Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, of establishing a mood so supercharged that your internals combust.
One could picture it playing American theaters back in 1994 alongside Atom Egoyan’s Exotica and Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy.
What Cohen brings to The Good Thief is the same air of beautiful fatalism he brought to Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and Atom Egoyan's Exotica (1994).
As in Exotica, her character is something of a moral linchpin.
Egoyan, an Armenian Canadian, began his career making kinky avant-gardish doodles (The Adjuster, Speaking Parts) and then, in 1995, broke through with Exotica, a coldly arresting mosaic of murder, mourning, and forbidden desire.
Canadian writer and director Atom Egoyan (Exotica) has done an extraordinary job adapting Russell Banks's 1991 novel for the screen.
Though his six previous features (including "Exotica" and "The Adjustor") have made him one of Canada's most respected writer-directors, matching Egoyan's highly personal sensibility with this lucid, unadorned book was not an obvious choice.
If that was all there was to it, director Atom Egoyan ("Exotica") might have been credited with taking a cinematically handsome pot-shot at lawyers.
However, the director's next effort, the much-lauded Exotica, broke down the character/audience barrier, and, at the time, proved to be Egoyan's most challenging effort.
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Although it's very much a "post-9/11" movie in subject matter, "Adoration" will probably remind viewers the most of Egoyan's "Exotica."
Prolific writer-director Atom Egoyan has already secured a large following stateside with films like the exceptional The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica and The Adjuster.
He tapped deep reservoirs of vulnerability in Sarah Polley (Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter), Elaine Cassidy (Felicia’s Journey), and newcomer David Alpay (Ararat).
There are so many interesting ideas in the first two acts of the film, which feel more like the Egoyan who made waves with the excellent Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, that it's easier to forgive the final act, which feels far too much like the twisting and turning Where the Truth Lies.
After the relatively generic thrillers Felicia's Journey and Where the Truth Lies and his epic drama Ararat, director Atom Egoyan returns to the elliptical narrative style and shifting points of view that characterized his earlier works, such as The Adjuster and Exotica.
All the intellectual elements one might expect from a movie by Atom Egoyan - the Canadian director best-known for his films "The Sweet Hereafter" and "Exotica" - play a powerful role in "Adoration," his latest feature.