Toronto. Thomas passes through the customs office and smuggles rare parrot eggs for his pet store. He shares a cab drive with a man who gives him tickets for ballet performance as a compensation. Thomas' store is audited by tax auditor Francis, who notices discrepancies. Francis spends his night going to the strip bar Exotica and always hires Christine to dance for him, so that they can talk. Exotica's DJ Eric is jealous at Francis, because Christine is his ex-girlfriend, and persuades Francis to touch her next time, only to then use this as a pretext to throw him out of the bar and ban his entrance. This surprises Eric's wife, the pregnant Zoe, who is Exotica's owner. Francis persuades Thomas to talk to Christine to see what happened. Francis wants to shoot Eric, but changes his mind when Eric reveals he found Francis' dead daughter years ago. A long time ago, Christine was the babysitter of Francis' daughter, who was abducted by a man. Francis thus kept his contact with Christine to this day.
One of Atom Egoyan's most famous films, which Roger Ebert included—generously—into his list of Great Movies, "Exotica" is a drama about how many people are interwoven and connected with each other, and uses the eponymous strip club only as an allegory for the characters who slowly reveal more and more intimate details about themselves, until their vulnerable psyche is exposed completely at the end. "Exotica" is strangely disorienting, since Egoyan uses a more unusal approach of randomly introducing characters and subplots, but the viewers are not certain what their relations are or how relevant all of this is for the plot. Peculiarly, the movie just keeps going with some situations without giving the context (Francis paying Tracy to babysit at his home, even though his place is empty), so the viewers will have to wait until the finale, when all the relations are explained, revealed and categorized, including Francis' tragic family past. However, the movie is not always inspired, and tends to focus on some bland sequences more than it should be warranted, whereas the dialogues are standard and flat, with only a few exceptions (one being the great dark moment when Francis says this to Tracy: "All I’m saying is that nobody asked to be brought into the world, you just ended up getting here. So the question is, now that you’re here, who’s asking you to stay?"). The rather melodramatic main plot was camouflaged into a more artistic juncture, which somewhat alleviated the thin story and some omissions (for instance, the supporting character of Thomas could have easily been cut from the story), whereas the most was achieved from excellent actors, including Elias Koteas as the jealous strip club DJ and Bruce Greenwood as the tormented Francis who is clinging on to the remains of his past.
Grade:++
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