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By day, Francis Brown (Bruce Greenwood) is a tax auditor for Revenue Canada. By night, he is an habitué of Exotica – a despondent man seeking comfort in the company of one of the club's dancers, Christina (Mia Kirschner), with whom he seems to have formed a bond.

Exotica’s owner Zoe (Arsinée Kahnjian, Egoyan's real-life wife), an alluring – and very pregnant – Middle Eastern woman, has fashioned a gentlemen’s club in a tropical rainforest-like setting, where her patrons can revel in the beauty of all the women who perform for them, or arrange for the individual attention of a dancer at a private table. Zoe's only hard-and-fast rule, on the threat of permanent expulsion from the club, is that the men never touch the women while they are performing, either onstage or at the tables.

All the while that Christina, clad demurely in a schoolgirl's uniform, silently does her act for him, Francis tearfully implores, "How could anyone hurt you?" Still, he is respectful of Zoe's rule that he never initiate physical contact, until Eric (Elias Koteas), the club's sleazy disc jockey, who becomes agitated by Christina's attentions to Francis, provokes him.

During the daytime hours, when he is not with Christina at Exotica, Francis spends his time auditing the books of a pet store owner, Thomas Pinto (Don McKellar), who has come under the scrutiny of the customs authorities and Revenue Canada for his brisk sideline business of smuggling rare tropical birds into the country. After being ousted from Exotica, Francis bribes Thomas into helping him get revenge on Eric, in exchange for hiding the evidence of the store's cooked books.

Led by Greenwood's brilliant, and heartbreaking, performance, and filling out the excellent supporting cast, are Sarah Polley as Tracey, a teenager with whom Francis has a puzzling financial arrangement born of denial, and Victor Garber as Howard, Tracey's father, a man who for good reason can't quite look Francis in the eye.

Beautifully photographed by DP Paul Sarossy, Exotica is a mesmerizing filmgoing experience made all the more riveting by the unsettling musical score of Mychael Danna and the amazingly apt use of Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows."

Egoyan is a master storyteller who has crafted his tale intricately. Secrets are revealed slowly, through a series of increasingly shattering flashbacks, and no mystery is resolved until Egoyan fully intends it to be. It isn't until the film's end that the last enigma falls away, and even then, the final frame leaves the viewer with a picture destined to stop the heart and linger in memory long after the last credit has rolled.

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originally posted: 01/05/05 09:13:17
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