Writer/director Atom Egoyan’s latest film is designed to allow him to marry both of his principal creative outlets into one project. While the film world knows him for his numerous drama films, he’s also an established opera director, dating back to his first staging of Salome with the Canadian Opera Company in 1996. When presented with the opportunity to restage the opera in 2023, he dealt with his conflicting feelings about it by writing a film script set directly within the rehearsal process of the opera.
Buy Chloe Blu-rayAmanda Seyfried reunites with Egoyan after their prior film, Chloe, this time as a rookie director named Jeanine who has been handed the dream Salome gig by decree of the opera’s deceased prior director. As she works through the gruelling production process with a distrustful cast and producers, she grapples with demons of her past involving both the prior director and her own father. There’s also a b-story involving the show’s lesbian prop designer and the handsy lead actor, but the principal focus is squarely on Jeanine’s attempts to deal with her past trauma concurrent with her present career stress.
Egoyan’s unique access to the resources of the Canadian Opera Company provides an unprecedented layer of authenticity to the opera production because it’s real, utilizing actual opera members and sets as they prepare for the actual live Salome staging. There’s a sense of his pride in finally getting to show off his opera credentials to the film world, but the film never devolves into a making-of opera documentary as he’s always focused on Jeanine’s story.
Seyfried demonstrates a new level of assured maturity here, even while playing a neophyte director trying to find her way in an uncomfortable situation. She’s fully believable as the boss in charge of steering the production, no longer an ingenue and miles away from her scarily deranged character in Chloe. She also navigates Jeanine’s traumas with masterful nuance, ensuring that we feel her character’s pain without overselling it.
Egoyan’s insightful script explores various behind-the-scenes power dynamics, from Jeanine’s realization that her youthful affair with the prior director was a massive overstep on his part, to the opera producers questioning every tweak she attempts to make to the prior director’s hallowed standards, and the boorish and sexist lead actor determined to put both her and the female prop designer in their places. Jeanine also faces her trauma regarding her own father’s inappropriate interactions with her as a child, even as his actions led her to the opera world in the first place. Unfortunately, Jeanine’s dual traumas are kept a bit too far at arm’s length, with Egoyan maddeningly hinting at both of them throughout the film rather than fully defining them, leaving much to audience inference.
Seven Veils opens in theaters on March 7th.
