Exotica

A tax auditor who watches the same dancer every night at a club cannot stop going. Everyone in the club has a life outside it and a loss. The film withholds the connections at first; who has been through what with whom settles into place slowly, and only at the end can the audience read the opening scene correctly. The narrative examines how grief binds people to strange rituals. Atom Egoyan wrote and directed, with Mia Kirshner, Bruce Greenwood and Sarah Polley. A real warning: the death of a child sits behind the film and is disclosed late. The club scenes are also shot with a deliberately uncomfortable intimacy.