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Tár and Black Swan vibes

Review by Will Sloan Liked

In a memorable scene, Atom Egoyan, the Canadian poet of technophobia, finally turns his caustic gaze to podcasters.

Amanda Seyfried is an opera director who is using a production of Salome to exorcise personal trauma. Like Harry Block before her, she seeks order in her art while there is disorder in her life - but unlike him, runs up against unsympathetic producers, human error, the collaborative nature of her chosen art form, the dictates of the text, and the vicissitudes of the current moment. That this was made while Egoyan himself was staging Salome at the Canadian Opera Company, and incorporates behind-the-scenes footage of that production, adds metatextual interest.

As usual with Egoyan, it can be hard to tell what is…

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In 2022-2023 Exotica director Atom Egoyan was asked by the Canadian Opera Company to mount his own gruesome and radical version of Salome here in Toronto (a strange and violent "love story" referred to in the film as the "first sex crime"), and while he put that show together he simultaneously conceived of and shot this film. Reteaming with Amanda Seyfried after the wonderfully weird Chloe over a decade ago, here she plays something of a meta stand-in for him as a "crazed, enchanted" director tortured by both the ghostly legacy of artists who have mounted this show before her and her own traumatic, patriarchal ones that have become entwined with the expressionist imagery of the opera itself (I heard…

Review by coffee ★★★★ Liked

“Nothing is clear to you right now except your pain.”

somewhere at the intersection between past, present, sex, shadow, trauma, fiction, and reality there is a way forward. i never thought i needed Canadian TÁR until i had it. doles out its plot at a dreamy, fractured pace and allows the exceptional mixed-format formalism to brush scenes away into a purely haunted, hypnotic mood until it has no choice but to let it all go in a cathartic and unsettling explosion not unlike the show it’s revolving around. won’t be for everybody but the lingering air of horror and tragedy lurking on every word of Seyfried’s career-best turn brought me right in and i never looked back. exactly the shit i love, Rebecca Liddiard is a star

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he’s back!

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Thrilling in its unraveling of impropriety across art in all its forms - stage, screen, even clay - all inextricable from pain. Bemused and slightly irritable, Egoyan seeks to understand a world profiting from harm. An excellent juxtaposition of the demanding of an intimacy coordinator only to immediately neglect real harm. It’s thorny!

All his usual themes are here but his delightful distrust of tech is an added wrinkle that gives this a layer of dread hidden behind icy iPad screens. Some of the compositions are just, like, damn. You forget people sone people still know how to build out a wide shot. The blocking on a monologue from a tremendous Amanda Seyfried about the meaning of a blowjob is out of this fucking world. Wildly great stuff.

Had no idea who Rebecca Liddiard was but wow, what an actor

Review by slugggy ★★★

I went into this thinking it was 'Black Swan but opera' and while that's not really what it is I still thought it was really interesting. I have no real background or interest in opera so I'm sure a lot of it went over my head but I liked how the story elements from the opera (Salome) paralleled what the main character was going through.

It almost felt more like a documentary sometimes than a proper drama but I thought it was beautifully filmed, especially the parts where they were performing, and overall it was a really well-made movie. It definitely struggled to hold my attention the entire time but this one is probably best enjoyed by people who really know the subject matter well.

Review by shookone ★★★

Egoyan's heavy narrative-driven and personage aggregating style sits well with the opera house setting, covering several layers of storylines he's putting out there. his films are always a ride you'll board, and have to go along for the better or worse. the decisions the films do, the roads they take are meticulously planned as construction sketches, and you'll always feel this, the more important it is a capable actress like Seyfried can carry this.

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Seven Veils is odd. Not in a narrative way, but in the way it structures and tells its story. It bounces back and forth from telling the story as it occurs and through two different podcasts of all things. It leads to the narrative feeling disted and just plain confusing, when the story itself is fairly straightforward. The performances and cinematography are solid, but they’re not enough to redeem the convoluted narrative structure. 

2025 Ranked

Review by Thel ★★★★★ Liked

If you dance for me, you may ask of me whatever you wish and I will give it to thee 

Review by Amanda the Jedi

Guys Salome was kinda not okay.

Script is a little messy but I did enjoy the parralels from her life to the stage. Just wish it had closed out with a bit more oomph

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This is a remounting of a career for Atom Egoyan. If the past two decades of his work have been less incisive than Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, here he returns to the opera that he initially directed between those films. So perhaps it is unsurprising that this is his most reflective work to date.

The greatest departure here for Egoyan is that this is not a film of secrets and it is not a film of young women and girls. In his earlier works, the closeness of the trauma is blinding to the characters, their isolation is hot and painful. Here, everyone knows about Janine's abuse, from her family to her coworkers to even the press. There is no…