30 Years of Exotica: Holding up a Mirror to Emotional Isolation

As the song goes, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Except it wasn’t for me in 2022. Something was glaringly amiss about the way my father was behaving. “There’s one more gift for you,” he proclaimed after all the presents had been unwrapped. “What is it?” But instead of receiving an answer I was met with a confused stare, as if his thought had slipped away. “What is it?” I pressed, more impatiently this time. After another pause he finally revealed it, “A Criterion subscription.” Two days later my father was hospitalized, where he remained for the last three months of his life, never to return home. Needless to say I never received his gift, but I decided to purchase a subscription for myself a week after the one year anniversary of his death to honor him, my kindred cinephile. I began chipping away at my watchlist, expeditiously checking off films I had been wanting to see for the longest time. That is when I chose to watch Exotica, a decision that impacted me beyond what I could have ever comprehended. My first watch was sacred. I felt seen at a time of my life when I was the most alone, when I was consumed by my grief. 

Atom Egoyan’s Exotica follows Francis (Bruce Greenwood), whose quiet despair binds the film’s intricate web of characters. Francis, a tax auditor mourning the loss of his daughter and wife, regularly visits the strip club Exotica to receive a personal dance from Christina (Mia Kirshner). One day, with encouragement from Eric (Elias Koteas), the club’s MC, Francis strays from this ritual and betrays Christina’s trust by touching her, subsequently leading to his banishment from the club. This turning point sends Francis into a frenzy as he attempts to reverse the consequences of his actions by blackmailing a pet shop owner under audit (Don McKellar) to go into the club and lure Eric outside, where Francis will be waiting with a gun. In correspondence with the striptease atmosphere of the film, the plot slowly undresses itself to reveal the underlying interpersonal relationships between Francis and the others.

The film’s Lynchian plot structure tempts you into making assumptions about the characters and the nature of their relationships from the very first line of dialogue. “You have to ask yourself: what brought the person to this point? What we’re seeing in his face, his manner that channeled him here. You have to convince yourself that this person has something hidden that you have to find…whether it’s his face, his gestures that you’re really watching.” Two customs officers surveil an unsuspecting man behind a two-way mirror, discussing his demeanor as he examines his reflection. The questions asked by these officers are also questions that we ask about the characters as viewers. Reflective of how an audience watches the film on a screen, multiple characters use two-way mirrors to peer into the lives of others and make assumptions about what their behaviors indicate.

Two-way mirrors appear in two of the film’s settings. In addition to the ones at the airport, Exotica is also lined with two-way mirrors that are shaped like a woman’s torso, permitting anyone to stealthily survey what is occurring on the club floor. In both instances, the mirrors serve as a tool for surveillance, which is a theme that is embedded in the setup of the strip club. Shaped like a panopticon with a raised central MC booth that resembles a guard tower, Exotica’s structure allows for constant observation of those inside. Whether it’s Eric covetously keeping tabs on Christina as she dances for Francis, club-owner Zoe (Arsinée Khanjian) monitoring the safety of her performers, or voyeuristic men observing the dancers from behind the walls, the fact that anyone inside the club can be inconspicuously watched creates an erotic form of surveillance. Whatever the characters try to conceal is eventually uncovered by those examining them, effectively rendering them prisoners of their secrets and trauma, which is conveyed in the lyrics of the aptly titled song that Christina dances to, Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows.

“And everybody knows that you're in trouble

Everybody knows what you've been through.”

As the characters devise judgments of each other based on what they know and observe, the reality of what they have witnessed can become obscured. Similarly, as viewers, we are forced to make assumptions about the characters based on how they conduct themselves, but as the story develops we begin to understand that the reasons behind their actions are more innocuous and tragic than we first assessed. The ability to watch others without being perceived, as afforded by the two-way mirrors, reflects the feeling of isolation that permeates the characters’ lives and is a driving force for the way they behave.

Exotica’s mirror motif extends to the characters as well, many of whom are mirrors of each other. Our first introduction is to a pet shop owner named Thomas who is the man we see being monitored by the customs officers. We soon learn that his shop is a front for his lucrative operation of smuggling exotic bird eggs, two of which are strapped to his abdomen as he passes through customs. Thomas successfully conquers the airport inspection, enters a shared taxi, and receives a pair of ballet tickets in exchange for the fare. He attends the ballet and sells one of the tickets to a man he meets outside the theatre. As the two watch the show, Thomas eyes the man’s body with the same voyeuristic detachment that Exotica’s patrons exhibit towards the dancers, yet he declines when invited out for a drink afterwards. From then on, Thomas practices this ritualistically as a way to pick up other men. He gazes at them during the performance but never really speaks to them, hindering him from forming any connections, which is primarily his desire. Thomas’ transactional approach to relationships is a manifestation of his emotional isolation, a result of the facade his illegal activities have forced him to create. Part of what entices him to the ticket ritual is the anonymity it affords. He only allows himself to be intimate with one of the men, who happens to be one of the customs officers, and reveals information about his egg smuggling endeavors to him. However this act of vulnerability backfires as the man steals the eggs before Thomas awakes and relinquishes them to a unit at his work. In a voicemail the officer admits that he recognized Thomas from surveilling him through the mirror at the airport. The officer’s prior knowledge of him, disclosed after their night together, poignantly echoes Thomas’ deeper emotional isolation, as his belief in the obscurity of their hookup exposes the barriers his deceptive life raises against genuine connection.

The manner in which Thomas navigates his loneliness emulates that of Francis. Like Francis, he relies on rituals to fill an internal void and escape his isolation. For both of them, ritualistic behaviors provide a sense of normalcy and connection to others. Egoyan draws parallels between the two characters via the two-way mirrors with an iteration of the opening scene, but instead of customs officers observing Thomas as he looks in the mirror, Eric watches Francis as he stares at his reflection while Christina performs. Signifying the discrepancy between self-perception and external perception, Thomas and Francis grapple with their life paths, but simultaneously others form their own judgments that are derived from what they observe. Even the environments they spend a majority of their time in mirror each other, symbolized by the presence of parrots in both settings, a bird known for mimicry and repetition. Exotica and the pet shop are businesses that profit off of living beings who are on display to be looked at and purchased for the fulfillment of a personal need. Similar to the strip club, the pet shop’s setup consists of prison imagery, with cages suspended from the ceiling and rows of clouded tanks along the walls. This atmosphere recaptures the feeling of surveillance that is explicitly invoked by the audit Francis is performing there to confirm what was already known about Thomas’ smuggling operation. Thomas and Francis believe these places to be sources of comfort, but in actuality they keep both men trapped in “secrets” that everybody already knows. Yet, as depicted by the murky tanks in the store, observing someone from behind glass can cloud the truth of what is being seen, both for the characters and for the audience watching.

Francis is the character most susceptible to false assumptions. Our introduction to him is mysterious and questionable; he drops off a teenage girl at an apartment complex and hands her some money, asking if she’s available next week and projecting his emotional needs onto her by wondering why she no longer asks him questions like she did in the past. We watch as he routinely visits a young stripper costumed in a schoolgirl uniform, eventually breaking an established rule by touching her. He even tells Thomas that police believed he murdered his own daughter. However as the film progresses, we learn that all these judgments surrounding Francis are incorrect. And ultimately the film renders its audience voyeurs, luring us to decode Francis’ tragedy in a way that sensationalizes his trauma for viewing pleasure, mirroring the spectatorial gaze we share with the other characters. In reality his behavior is a product of trauma and grief, which he copes with by following rituals, something the other characters also participate in for empathetic and self-centered reasons. Foreshadowed by the song Everybody Knows, we discover that, aside from Thomas, the characters are aware of Francis’ history, but accommodating his grief also serves a purpose for each of them, making their relationships transactional. As the film teases information about the characters that contextualize their connections to Francis, you realize that the assumptions you made as a viewer were more erotic than the story lends itself to. The teenage girl Francis drives home is the daughter, Tracey (Sarah Polley), of his paraplegic brother, who he pays to “babysit,” or more accurately housesit, while he visits Exotica. When Francis divulges that suspicion surrounded him after his daughter’s death, he explains how police theorized that he doubted his daughter’s paternity after a long-term affair was unveiled between his wife and brother when the two were involved in a car accident together – the same car accident that was responsible for his wife’s death and his brother’s paralysis. Francis’ brother enables him to use Tracey as a pawn in his ritual to assuage his guilt over the affair and for being the one to survive the accident. 

For Francis, Tracey is a mirror of Christina in the past, and Christina is a mirror of his deceased daughter, which is evident in the last five minutes of the film. Armed with a gun, Francis awaits Eric outside Exotica to avenge his banishment, but instead Eric approaches him with composure and reveals that he was the one who found the daughter’s body, illuminating the scenes dispersed throughout the film of Christina and Eric’s first encounter during a missing person search. The final sequence is a flashback to when Francis’ daughter and wife were still alive. He drives a teenaged Christina home after she babysits his daughter, and the two converse in the car like Francis desired from Tracey earlier in the film. Francis consoles Christina after she opens up about her difficult home life and the two affirm that their families are lucky to have them. In the present, Eric, Christina, and Francis are trauma bonded. Francis visits Exotica because watching Christina reminds him of a time when his family was still intact, but she also chooses to participate in his ritual because she benefits from it. As alluded to in the closing scene, Francis provides emotional support and connection to Christina as well. “What would happen if someone hurt you?... if I’m not there to protect you,” he asks as she privately dances for him. Christina is an ersatz replacement for his daughter, signified by the school uniform she once wore. When Eric and Francis speak about her in the club’s bathroom, their discussion is intercut with a home video clip of Francis’ daughter, a subtle nod to the parallels between the two. Similarly Tracey fulfills Christina’s old role as a babysitter and is forced to engage in heavy conversation with Francis during the car rides home. His behavior towards both girls, deemed idiosyncratic by the audience and other characters, is his attempt at finding substitutes for his past life to ease the pain of grief. 

Egoyan’s Exotica is fundamentally a story about grief, loneliness, and obsession. Although enduring loss is a universal experience, it is emotionally isolating. As reflected by the two-way mirrors, isolation is a feeling shared by all the characters but especially Francis. His loneliness has exacerbated his desperation for connection, and he engages in seemingly odd, ritualistic behavior to cope. Francis’ rituals provide a sense of normalcy and remind him of those he lost, but the comfort this gives him is artificial, fostering a transactional dynamic that underlies his relationships. As the film masterfully portrays, grief is a traumatizing experience that drives complex and obsessive behavior fueled by the undying desire to return to how life was before tragedy destroyed it. 

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