Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

erdmannmartin Exotica is Egoyan's best movie and the best movie I've ever seen.Exotica raises the question of our existence, what we are supposed to do on Earth as humans. And this as a subtext in a perfect narration of people whose paths come together in the "Exotica".There is no other film that contains such poetic but accurate dialogues. In this artwork, every spoken word has a meaning in relation to the meta-narrative.The very good work with the music motifs and the location, merged with the film dialogues, give the film an atmosphere that is neither sad nor happy, but exceptionally gorgeous and yet earthly.I'm very thankful to see this wise movie.

avik-basu1889 'Exotica' is a film that exists in a realm that can be called elevated reality. This is because neither is the narrative fully grounded in hardcore realism, nor does it expect the viewer to suspend disbelief completely. The movie remains suspended in between hardcore realism and fantasy fiction, which ends up giving it a tone of poetic realism.Thematically the film is primarily about grief, emotional baggage and the lasting effect that sorrow can have in a person's life. The opening line of dialogue is - 'You have to ask yourself, what brought this person to this point?' I think this line very succinctly summarises the film. We come across various characters who are engaged in various activities. Director Atom Egoyan slowly and gradually divulges secrets about their past lives and slowly we get to understand what baggage all these characters carry and how they are connected to each other, some directly, some tangentially. We come to understand that all these characters have had incidents happen to them in the past which have shaped and molded their present. In order to deal with grief and past trauma, some characters have had to adopt options that many people might call objectionable and morally questionable. This is where Egoyan lends an air of humanism to the film as he tries to understand why and what circumstance will compel someone to choose to do something morally problematic(like spending every night in a strip club and watching a young girl dressed in a schoolgirl's uniform dance for you) instead of judging them for their choices.Another prominent thematic element in the film is the presence of a constant series of 'transactions'. Characters constantly engage in transactions and exchange favours from one another like the transaction between Francis and Christina, the contract between Zoe and Eric, the agreement between Francis and Tracey, the exchange of ballet tickets between Thomas and the random strangers at the ballet performances,etc. The root cause of these transactions is again the need for people to get to terms with their grief, their loneliness and their lives as a whole.The film is called 'Exotica' because the strip club called 'Exotica' plays a central role in the film. But why did Egoyan decide to name the strip club as well as the film 'Exotica'? Whenever someone hears the term exotic there is a tendency to equate it with something sexual. However it has to be said, that the scenes in the strip club aren't really very sexy or alluring. So again the question stands, why is the film called 'Exotica'? My interpretation of the name goes like this - 'exotic' in the true sense of the word means something that seems unfamiliar to a person's usual existence. In the scenes inside the strip club, what is noticeable is that instead of focusing on the naked dancers, Egoyan devotes a lot of shots to capturing the faces of the male clients who sit at all the tables, one of them being Francis himself. Something that is easily visible is the look of acute indifference on the faces of these men. Yes they are appreciating the ladies dancing for them, but one can see the indifference in their eyes which is hiding some sort of latent sadness. This gets explored more deeply through the exploration of the character of Francis. So, this strip club is sort of like the garden of Eden for these men(the trees and palms give the club a distinctive look too) where they come to escape from their real sadness to enjoy a few moments of planned make- believe. Since the club gives them an experience which gives the men a relief from their tough realities, it is called 'Exotica' and since the major characters in the film go out of their way to cope with the grim realities of their lives, it is only natural that the film will be called the same too.The primary score composed by Mychael Danna is just perfect as it so beautifully captures the tone of the film. The score certainly sounds exotic and has a distinct Middle-Eastern vibe to it which lends it a bit of a seductive aura. However, beneath the seductive edge, one can also very distinctly notice a melancholic core that enriches the score.Performance wise I think everyone is brilliant. But I'll give a special mention to Bruce Greenwood and Mia Kirshner. Bruce Greenwood exudes and lends so much sensitivity to Francis and makes him an absolutely heartbreaking character.'Exotica' is a film about people with grieving hearts who are compelled to engage in transactions and make compromises in order to cope with their severely distressing lives. It is a very humane film that tries to understand the characters instead of judging them. Highly Recommended.

tieman64 This is a review of "The Sweet Hereafter" and "Exotica", two films by Atom Egoyan, both of which deal with tragedy and loss and both of which feature the same actors in similar roles.Like most of his films, Egoyan's "The Sweet Hereafter" is structured as a jigsaw possible assembled around a single traumatic event. As the film unfolds, and the cast's relationship to the central event grows in clarity, some moment of revelation is achieved. Virtually all of Egoyan's films adopt this narrative structure, which seems to blend a modernist search for truth with a decidedly postmodern admittance that truth requires the careful sorting of both vantage points and testimonials.The traumatic event in this case is an accident involving a school bus. The bus skids off a road and veers onto a frozen lake. The ice breaks, the bus sinks and 14 children die. Of course, everyone in the town then suffers the knock-on effect of this accident.Man, you might say, is a creature constantly in search of meaning (the brain itself is a pattern recognition machine). He creates myths, patterns and rhymes, trying desperately to assert some measure of order. He cannot accept the chaotic cruelty of the universe, preferring instead to create comfortable rituals and routines in the hope of insulating himself from pain.When the unexpected does occur, man lifts his head and cries "Why?". But God never answers. Into this vacuum steps Ian Holm, who in "The Sweet Hereafter" plays a lawyer trying desperately to assign meaning to the film's central bus crash. He wants the parents of the dead children to band together and file a law suit. A law suit against who? The guilty bus driver? Nope, the driver is broke. He wants to go after the company that made the bus. He wants to sue them for millions. It is their fault. Alone.At first Ian Holm comes across as a greedy pig. Here is a man milking suffering for money. But gradually we learn that he is himself a man intimately familiar with loss. His life has been one of misery, and the film is peppered with flashbacks detailing his relationship with his daughter, a drug addict who is dying of AIDS. Like the parents whom he hopes to represent, this lawyer is looking for the meaning of his own suffering. "Why me?" he cries. Lashing out against others and assigning blame is the only way he can rationalise things.Similarly, the small town in which the accident occurs seems at first to be a picturesque postcard village. But gradually this image is shattered, as promiscuity, infidelity, alcoholism and sexual abuse all raise their heads. Director Atom Egoyan, an outspoken fan of "The Shining", even uses the famous "Horse and Train" picture from Kubrick's film, a recognition that both films deal subliminally with the same buried, almost invisible horrors.On top of all this, Egoyan adds a layer of myth. He has one of the film's children narrate Robert Browning's "The Pied Piper of Hamelin". In a self referential moment, the child asks "Who took the children? Who was the piper? Why did the fabled portal in the mountain (the breaking ice) open up and swallow the kids?"In this way, Egoyan approaches his central the tragedy from at least 3 angles. Firstly, as a fateful moment of chance, secondly, as a mythical act of God (God smites the parent's for their sins) and thirdly as an event exploited by a vengeful pilgrim of pain. All three approaches seek to lay blame, targeting either the failures of parents, the actions of a punishing god or the laws of a wholly arbitrary cosmos."The Sweet Hereafter" is a very hopeless film, man never able to grasp absolute clarity (which of my behaviours, if any, caused this?). But there's also something very hopeful about Egoyan's ending. The sweet hereafter of the title is that zone of wisdom (found by the child who narrates the Piped Piper) where we ultimately come to accept the unacceptable and go on living.Similar in structure, Egoyan's "Exotica" approaches the same themes from a different angle. A man (Francis) loses his wife and daughter in a car crash. To cope with the pain he hires a young girl to come over to his house every day and babysit the daughter he lost. This babysitter simply plays a piano and lurks about his empty house, after which the bereaved father drives her home and pays her for babysitting nothingness. This ritual helps Francis assuage his pain. Every night Francis also visits a strip-club called "Exotica". There he watches a young woman (Christina), dressed in a schoolgirl's outfit, strip. But their relationship is an odd one. They seem to have a strange history. When she dances for him, it has nothing to do with sex and more to do with longing and loss. Of course both Francis and the stripper have a secret which is incrementally revealed, the truth peeled back like a stripper's clothes, leading to that revelatory final payoff that is typical of Egoyan's work. I won't spoil that moment. Suffice to say that this movie takes us into fairly interesting places. For Egoyan, man seems to live a life of cyclical substitution (we grow or are pushed out of everything and are forced to find substitutes). It's a bleak film, but unlike the work of Sam Mendes, to whom Egoyan is often wrongly compared, Egoyan eschews easy sensationalism and carnival freak-shows. 8.5/10 - Worth two viewings.

newkfl I would have to admit that Exotica turned out to be a better film than I had imagined. It was slow in parts, but I guess it was to counter some of the scenes in the movie. There were some very disturbing characters in the movie too that really did not have problems so to speak, but certainly could have used some help from a trained sexual therapist. I would have certainly kept my distance from the character with the very hairy chest. I do not even think that he knew what he was going to do next. There was some good bar scene shots and dialog, but all in all, I think that the ending was a little bit rushed. It made me think of several ways that the movie could have been changed to fit the ending. Do not blink!!!