Despite films such as Exotica, The Adjuster, and The Sweet Hereafter capturing the attention of a global audience in the 1990s, Atom Egoyan has never risen to the pantheon of auteurs or seen his work much cited in either cinephilic or academic circles. This perhaps has something to do with the filmmaker’s style, which typically manifests as a unique and personal mélange of more generic filmic tendencies and highbrow arthouse sensibilities. It wouldn’t be unfair to observe, then, that Egoyan is most comfortable in his own skin and lane, and seems to have no problem with his view from the periphery of international cinema luminaries. This enigmatic quality is often reflected in his films, too. With his latest feature Seven Veils (which initially premiered at the 2023 edition of TIFF), Egoyan once again finds himself exploring the dark realms of physiological and existential shadows: specifically, the story of Jeanine (Amanda Seyfried, teaming up with Egoyan for the first time since 2009’s Chloe), a diligent and aspiring theater director who’s given the demanding responsibility of remounting her former mentor’s production of Richard Strauss’ prestigious opera Salome. It’s an ambitious task for Jeanine, one that during the production process gradually leads her through a psychological labyrinth of childhood memories and traumas (specifically, recollections of her abusive father), envious longings (both toward the perfectionism of her former mentor’s work and her ex-husband’s relationship with his new partner), and desire (both for artistic success and a young understudy).
As is evident in the film’s opening sequence — where Jeanine in a somewhat phantom-esque manner walks around the Canadian Opera Company’s corridors and rooms, eventually coming to stand before the big-screen moving images of a little girl in the woods, the projector smoothly reflecting shadows on her face — Egoyan shapes Seven Veils as a complex mise en abyme. The film employs frequent use of reflections, laptop and cell phones screens, and a couple instances of superimposed images in its articulation of Salome’s central concern with notions of lust, ambition, and revenge: the tragic story finds Salome, King Herod’s stepdaughter, being rejected by John the Baptist and subsequently demanding his head from the King in exchange for performing the “Dance of the Seven Veils.” The film necessarily holds all the expected melodramatic weight and narrative convolutions that follow from such a setup: professionally, Jeanine is seeking to outdo her mentor and come out from his shadow, while in her personal relationships she metaphorically struggles to behead her abusive father(-figure) and subconsciously retaliate against her ex-husband by seducing the young understudy. But when regarded from another angle, multiple elements of the film — for instance, a subplot involving Clea (Rebecca Liddiard), a young props department worker who is harassed by the production’s lead actor, whose head she must ironically sculpt as a stand-in for a decapitated John the Baptist — can frame Seven Veils as as a cinematic remount of the director’s actual stage work for the Canadian Opera Company in 2023: an approach that frequently imbues the film with a singular, behind-the-scenes documentary-like effect as well.
In fact, it’s none too hard to view Egoyan’s overall aesthetic as a sort of spontaneous neo-expressionism. Whether with regard to the stage visuals and sets, which are very reliant on working with shadow plays, puppets, expressive sounds, and lights, or in the film’s cinematographic style, which emphasizes what’s constantly at play in Seyfried’s facial expressions (the actress here delivering one of her most profound performances of her career), angular compositions, and saturated colors. The result is a film which beautifully occupies a border between the psychological complexities of Brian De Palma’s Passion and the modern magnificence of Todd Field’s Tár, occasionally adding to the eerily seductive atmosphere by introducing various cringe-comic situations or fourth-wall breaks (either through voiceovers or one scene wherein Clea films herself with her phone as she explains the production’s process). Such boldly captivating qualities are merely part and parcel to Egoyan’s vision in Seven Veils, and while this approach will surely lead curious viewers toward rewatches in order to fully grasp the myriad narrative and symbolic details at play in the film’s shadows, a single viewing works plenty well to pull viewers in. With Seven Veils, Egoyan has delivered a bacchanal feast for the eyes and ears, a playful and sybaritic victual for the mind to turn over for some time.
DIRECTOR: Atom Egoyan; CAST: Amanda Seyfried, Rebecca Liddiard, Douglas Smith, Mark O’Brien; DISTRIBUTOR: XYZ Films/Variance Films; IN THEATERS: March 7; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 47 min.
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