Written and Directed by Atom Egoyan | 107 min | ▲1/2
This film is a testament to Amanda Seyfried’s astonishing talent. She’s at its centre, delivering a passionate, emotionally grounded performance. It’s also the one thing keeping this ill-advised effort on the rails. I don’t blame Seyfried’s cast mates for this — it’s as if Atom Egoyan chose all the most awkward takes to assemble his story, a frustratingly confused and unsatisfying psychodrama.
Seyfried is Jeanine, who an indistinct time ago was part of a production of the opera Salome where she had a passionate affair with her married mentor, the man who put on the show. When he died, he (or his wife, it’s unclear) insisted Jeanine direct a remount of Salome. We also learn elements of that original production were inspired by Jeanine’s childhood, where she was abused by her father — so her adulterous older lover and mentor was mining her past for creative material? What an asshole. Now in charge of this production, she aims to make changes to it — perhaps to provide some kind of closure and relief from past trauma — which upsets some of the executive at the opera who are selling it on the mentor’s name.
And that’s just the start of this clumsy and ponderous picture: One of Jeanine’s actors, an understudy, is someone she’s had a crush on since they were both in the original show together. (Wait, wasn’t she hot for the married guy? This is as clear as mud.) All this while she’s away from home, separated from her husband, daughter, and senility-stricken mother, and just to continue the adultery thread, her husband is sleeping with the nurse who’s taking care of her mother. We learn all this through frequent Zoom calls, which are easily the worst part of the film. They could be completely cut out without impacting the picture, saving us 20 terrible minutes.
But we’re not done yet with the plot complications: at the opera the soap continues. A German actor who performed in yet another outrageous production of Salome in Europe has a terrible reputation, making life difficult for Jeanine and the rest of the crew. Meanwhile a props person is filming her process, and romantically involved with another understudy. Jeanine, stymied by the executives to have her director’s notes shared with the public, instead writes her thoughts in a journal, which seems to have no function in the film other than to provide Egoyan a voiceover crutch to let us into his lead’s mind — a classic case of telling, not showing.
Seven Veils does improve somewhat as it goes along, though it never quite loses the feeling that it’s been assembled as a gag, an elaborate skit on Saturday Night Live, perhaps, a goof on Black Swan or some other high-toned backstage picture. While dancers’ shadows projected on a screen make for haunting imagery, everything else about the production of Salome looks shoddy and borderline ridiculous. The thread of patriarchal abuse throughout is there, but the film seems to suggest women are just as passionate, manipulative, and dangerous — paralleling the biblical story of the opera. But, so what? Thematic clarity is absent to an embarrassing degree.
It’s good, then, that Egoyan convinced his Chloe star to return to Toronto to anchor the film. Her unerring gift is all that works for Seven Veils, elevating it, even as the rest of it founders.
