Returning to this film after a gap of many years, I find it just as stunning as I remember, even if I remember very few of the scenes. Of course I did remember Mia Kirshner's schoolgirl strip to Leonard Cohen! The film is particularly effective and affecting because the characters are so well portrayed that they seem to be unravelling exactly what is going on the same as we are. I understand that Egoyan dislikes audition for his actors, preferring to select them on past work (preferably theatre work) and then presenting them with the part. In that way they take ownership of the character and we get to experience a very emotional tale. A list of the more difficult themes in which this film engages would put off many and that the main location is a posh strip club might seem an obstacle for many. Nevertheless this is an important, beautifully shot film in which seemingly minor moments turn out to have great significance, first for one and then another. Mesmerising with perfect direction, camera work, acting and music. I cannot praise this work of art more highly.

This cryptic, psychological drama is centred on a strip club called Exotica. A troubled man visits the club in order to re-enact a psychologically complex relationship he has with one of the young strippers who dances for him every night. The story progresses in a low-key manner until the stories of several disparate characters, including an exotic pet shop owner and the unhappy club DJ, intertwine.This unusual drama is about obsessive behaviour and people who are unable to move on or escape from their past. By the end, with the use of some key flash-backs, it has offered several clues without explaining very much explicitly. But from these we are able to better understand why certain characters act the way they do and are in the position in life they are. It's certainly a fairly intriguing film overall that will reward those who can take the distancing effect of its overly stylised form of acting. It's labelled in some places as an erotic drama but it has to be said that for a film centred on a strip club it's really a very unerotic film. It uses this place as a springboard to explore more psychological issues than physical ones.Certainly not for all tastes but it will stick in the mind of some long after viewing.

The first time I have seen this movie was 10 year ago. I recorded it on video back then and watched it at least 4 times in last 10 years. It's very unusual for me, I rarely watch a movie twice. This movie has all ingredients that make a good movie for me: Awesome characters, perfectly fitting actors that play them well. Great music and a stunning atmosphere. (The music is simplified, unusual and perfectly fitting.) An amazing story that moves you and keeps you interested till the end.In addition to that, the movie has some nice bonus points: It's sexy (I love Mia Kirshner), intelligent and forces you to think. - And that is probably the one thing I like the most about movies.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)Atom Egoyan's Exotica is an outstanding movie. I have seen Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter (1997) which is also very good. A father's (obsessive) love for his daughter(s) is featured in both movies, consequently the theme must mean something special to Egoyan. He is a most talented and original movie maker, a Canadian as are his players, Bruce Greenwood, (Francis Brown, the accountant whose daughter was murdered), Sarah Polley, (Tracey, the high school girl), and Mia Kirshner, (Christina, the exotic dancer). His wife, Arsinee Khanjian and Polley were also featured in The Sweet Hereafter.What really makes the movie is Egoyan's use of time and action sequence. He cuts up the chronological order of events and then presents them in a dramatic way. This is not so easy to do. Christopher Nolan in Memento (2000) used the same technique to great advantage. I have come late to such a technique and would love to master it myself. I worked on it last year and a couple of years before. You can't just scissor it and then paste it back together. Something must be gained from reversing the order of events. When Eric and Christina are shown walking the fields in a long line of people I jumped to the conclusion that Tracey would be found dead. We don't learn that Francis lost his daughter until the film is nearly finished.The psychology of Francis and the young girls is interesting. Christina says she gave something to him and he gave something to her. This vagueness with its unmistakable sexuality is something that always exists between young girls and older men. And, as Egoyan observes, there are rules and awkwardness, and confused emotions. However the girl wants it made unmistakably clear that she is desired physically and just talk is almost never sufficient. She often doesn't know whether she really wants to be "taken" fully, and of course that is usually, shall we say, problematic. Some great subtly is required in handled such a theme, and Egoyan realizes that. His character Francis Brown is content with fantasy and does not touch at all.This film would have found a larger audience except for the title, the theme, and the milieu. The female audience for the most part didn't even consider watching the movie since, as one woman said, I thought it was just another movie with an older man lusting after a girl half his age. That theme bores women to death. But surprisingly at the IMDb a viewer asks how women feel about the film and several write in to say that they liked it. Another poster remarks that women over forty actually liked Exotica in higher percentages than males.I thought the veracious and business-like depiction of the exotic dancer club was well done. The very nice side plot with the gay animal importer was just a perfect fit for the main plot. Egoyan wrote the script. It is a great script. So much surprises. It's almost too good. For me, since I have seen so many, many movies, something different, some surprises in plot, in character, in treatment are always welcome.And the plot does surprise. Even when the protagonist, Francis waits outside the club to shoot Eric, Egoyan turns the situation on its head by having Eric appear from the side and explain something that changes Francis's attitude toward him.I am being vague because I don't want to spoil the story. Some movies—most movies I would say, since I go back to the generation that would go into the theatre and sit down during the middle of the movie; and then four or five hours later, realize, "This is where I came in"--in most movies to know the ending or the plot would not spoil the movie. We know so and so dies at the end. What is interesting is how he dies, how the actions develops. But in this movie to know the plot would take something away.I think. I'm not sure. Anyway Francis is a tax auditor who lost his daughter when she was less than eight years old. She was murdered. The police initially thought he did it, but he was found innocent and the murderer was apprehended and convicted. But Francis is left hollow and tries to bring her back in a way by having teenage girls "babysit" his nonexistent daughter. Egoyan teases us near the beginning by showing Francis and Tracey in his car as he drops her off at her home giving her some money and asking, "Are you free Thursday?" Very near the end of the movie we find that Tracey had a precursor in that babysitting role. You might be able to guess who it was.The sound track features "Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen.