EXOTICA
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1995 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: This scattered mosaic of a film
forces the viewer to piece together its plot from
fragments presented along the way. While the
story, once assembled, is ultimately dissatisfying,
the challenge of assembling the pieces to
understand the whole story keeps the viewer
engrossed. Explicit scenes set in a strip club and
the film's view of that business will have an
appeal all their own. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4)
There is a party game called "A Stick Falls, a Man Dies." The person running the game gives players a very high-level description of an invented incident and players try to figure out what really happened, asking only yes-or-no questions. By doing this players geta fragment of the story here, one there, soon there are whole parts of the story they understand. Finally the right piece falls into place and they understand the whole story. Films, of necessity, make the viewer play a similar game. In the first scene of a film the audience see characters they don't yet know in a situation they don't yet understand. Most filmmakers try to bring viewers up to speed as quickly as possible, giving all the necessary clues as quickly as possible. Generally it is the mark of a bad filmmaker to leave the viewer confused. But it is very possible to tell a story much like as in the game where the pieces are revealed in no particular order. A bit at a time, the way the pieces fit together is uncovered to the viewer until the viewer has a whole story. PULP FICTION did that to some extent, telling its interlocking stories out of chronological order on purpose to make the audience work to piece together the overall story. MARATHON MAN intentionally shows the audience a very diverse set of scenes with odd characters before it starts knitting them together into a single story. Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan goes much further in that direction in his cinematic jigsaw puzzle EXOTICA. The characters and situations are intentionally confusing to challenge the viewer initially to put them together to make a story. And with Egoyan's mischievous wit, the story is not just told as a jigsaw puzzle, it is told to mislead on purpose. The gaps that the viewer attempts to fill in for himself, he is probably wrong about. And the story that gets shown to the viewer a bit at a time is perfectly suited to this style of telling. It is about the secrets in people's lives that they do not reveal to others, and perhaps not even to themselves.
The one problem in all this is that when you hear the solution in the party game, the story may make a nifty puzzle solution, but it is just not that good a story all by itself. EXOTICA has the same problem. When the last secrets are disclosed in the final scene, what you have is a story that needs the convoluted telling because it just is not compelling on its own. The plot that connects the three major characters--the smuggler, the tax auditor, and the strip club host-- seems overly contrived and frankly, just not all that interesting. One comes away saying, "Oh. Is that all?" The story is curiously unmoving.
Egoyan both wrote and directed this piece which is bound to appeal to some audiences for the intellectual appeal of what is slowly revealed in its central puzzle. And it may appeal to quite a different audience for what is more quickly and easily revealed in its explicit sex club scenes.
This is a film with more than its share of surprises that expertly catches the viewer off-balance more often than not. Unfortunately, Egoyan is more interested in his game of secrets about his characters than in actually giving us insights. I give EXOTICA a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
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