(Check out Chris Reed’s Seven Veils movie review. The film is playing now in theaters via Elevation Pictures. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
The work of Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan (Guest of Honour) is often complex and narratively circuitous, engaging with time and memory in sharply evocative ways. His latest, Seven Veils, falls squarely within his cinematic obsessions while also bringing in additional passions; in this case, opera. Real life and fiction intermingle as he mixes his own staged version of Richard Strauss’ one-act 1905 opera Salome with an onscreen story about the very same production. Sound overly complicated? It is not, everything fitting together seamlessly to powerful results.
The title comes from the dance that takes place towards the opera’s conclusion, when Salome dances for her stepfather, King Herod Antipas, to convince him to behead John the Baptist, with whom she has fallen in love and who ignores her; she hopes in this way to finally be able to kiss the lips of the man, even if it kills him (literally) for her to do so. The plot—taken from Oscar Wilde’s 1893 play—is layered with themes of incest, abuse, and confused desire, all of which erupt in the titular, frenzied ballet. Herod wants Salome, who longs for Jean the Baptist, lust and death cavorting in a grotesque pirouette.
In Seven Veils, actress Amanda Seyfried (First Reformed) plays Jeanine, a young theater director given her first shot at opera when Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company asks her to restage a previous version of the work by the celebrated Charles, now deceased. Charles mentored Jeanine, who was his assistant on the original production. It turns out that the two were also lovers, which further muddies the creative waters.
Jeanine has additional history with the piece, thanks to her father (also dead) who used her, when she was but a child, as a model to choreograph Salome’s dances. He videotaped her in a variety of suggestive poses and moves which he then later passed on to Charles for inspiration. Jeanine’s father may have done worse than that, too; it is up to the viewer to imagine exactly what.
Jeanine is married, though undergoing a trial separation from her husband while she stages the opera, communicating with him, her daughter, and her mother (suffering from early-stage dementia), as well as her mother’s caretaker, via videochat as she spends time away. That caretaker and her husband exchange meaningful looks, hinting at more below the surface. As in Salome, which we watch unfold in rehearsals, libido and intellect collide in very problematic ways.
Egoyan handles the challenging motifs expertly, as one would expect from the artist who gave us such 1990s masterpieces as Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter. The actors portraying the opera singers are the actual stars of his 2023 version of Salome, and they acquit themselves admirably. Still, though there are many fine actors here—including Rebecca Liddiard (A Thousand Little Cuts) as the company’s prop master—this is very much Seyfried’s movie, and she holds our attention in every scene, tormented by demons past and present, filled with a vision that meets opposition at every turn, and very determined to see it through. Her dance, unlike Salome’s, may be internal, but it is no less fraught, and no less poignant.
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
Elevation Pictures; Seven Veils; Atom Egoyan
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