Spicy '90s cinema often seems so quaint now. I watched Atom Egoyan's 1994 film Exotica again, which is his most famous film, though it's by no means well known in the mainstream. Last time I watched it it was because I was so into his Chloe with Amanda Seyfried that I wanted to see the film that put him on the map and, as I recall, I found it nowhere near as satisfying. I still don't find it the kind of visceral, sexy fun that Chloe is but I found myself more compelled to puzzle out just what he thought he was getting at.
It doesn't feel like it's set in anything resembling real life, but none of Egoyan's films do, which is part of their charm. Exotica is the name of a strip club in the movie which I doubt much resembles any real life strip club. Egoyan has said he was interested in the "ritual" of strip clubs, the girl stripping and the man encouraged to look but not touch. The patrons of Exotica are all quiet men, solemnly sitting alone at their tables while naked or partially clothed women's bodies gyrate before them like animated sculptures. It's about as different as you can get from the noisy, party atmosphere you see in other movie strip clubs, like in Anora or even Flashdance. I don't know, maybe Canadian strip clubs are different.
Exotica is set in Toronto. Bruce Greenwood plays Francis whose fixation on a dancer named Christina (Mia Kirshner) seems to go beyond sexual. Actually, by the end of the movie, you may wonder if there's anything sexual about him at all. It's only by default that one figures there must be. Elias Koteas plays Eric, a DJ at the club who provides a ruminating, running commentary. Christina's shtick is to wear schoolgirl uniforms complementing her small frame and youthful looks. "What is it about schoolgirls?" Eric asks the audience and starts talking about innocence and purity.
In a scene with a character played by Sarah Polley, Francis explains that the difference between adults and children like herself is that adults have "baggage" which contributes to certain base level of tension in any extended interaction between two adults. Perhaps this is why he prefers the company of girls to women, or women he can convince himself are girls.
Of all the characters, Christina remains the most enigmatic by the end of the film, which is fairly normal for movies about a man obsessed with a woman or girl, though just about the opposite of what I found so interesting about Chloe. It's the enigma itself the feeds the flame of obsession, the give and take between the fantasy the man projects on the woman and the reality of her personality and motives. Sometimes the two meet, sometimes there's the shock of discord when any difference is discovered. Sometimes it's this give and take that gives a relationship piquancy. In this case, Christina is quite eager to be the fantasy for Francis, temporarily, night after night, but it's most definitely not sexual. Or isn't it? The movie's choice to avoid suggesting it in any way only makes me wonder at it any more. It is a strip club, after all. Crucially, we learn absolutely nothing about Francis' wife. We don't even know if they're separated or divorced.
The information we have about Francis is so tightly controlled as Egoyan spools out the mystery. Not unlike the stripper on whom the patrons project their fantasies, we are compelled to project our own ideas on Francis. Surely we're not crazy for assuming he's horny if he's paying a stripper to give him a private dance. What I'm not sure about is if Egoyan is ultimately saying there's nothing sexual about Francis' motives or if his problem is a vast iceberg of unexamined sexuality. Maybe this movie just needed to be longer.
Anyway, Christina's strip tease to Leonard Cohen is still cool. Though not especially sexy.
Exotica is available on The Criterion Channel.
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