22/46
A serious theater director is tasked with reviving her former mentor’s most famous work, the opera Salome. Some disturbing memories from her past allow her repressed trauma to color the present. This is the second time Amanda Seyfried has starred in a film directed by Atom Egoyan since Chloe (2009). Quoted in Amanda the Jedi Show: I ALMOST Walked Out | The Best and Worst of TIFF 2023 (2023). There’s a gripping and haunting story by Hawthorne in which a father, a prominent avant-garde doctor, protects his daughter with all his might. As a child, he gradually introduces her to a deadly poisonous plant. When she grows up, anyone who comes near her will suffer and die. The plant’s poison is laced into her lifeblood. The woman is beautiful and terrible. “Don’t you love?” he asks, “that no one can bring you down?” Her answer cuts to the core. “Father, I would have preferred to love someone.” Jeanine is a theater director who, like the woman in Hawthorne’s story, is trying to break free from the shadow of heartless people. She suffers abuse from her father, mentor, husband, and now an arrogant actor – abuse they call “love” – and tries to heal and move beyond it without losing what is essential and good about herself. She struggles to break free from the traps set for her. To find something else. “Taking one sense, others are sharpened.” I love Egoyan films for their depth, surprising twists, and exploration of fascinating themes (passion, miscarriages of justice, abuse, trying to find a way forward after wrongs have been committed, love, perspectives other than my own, and more). Seven Veils follows a woman who is disoriented after abuse, keeping in typical Egoyan fashion. The film is set in the Canadian Opera Company building, just a few blocks from where I saw the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Although Egoyan spent too much time in the theater for my liking, I understand why that was the case. Egoyan directed the opera company’s real production of Salome and incorporated much of that into Seven Veils. Even some of the actors from the real opera are in the film. Jeanine is expertly brought to life by Amanda Seyfried. Off topic – why did Seyfried have surgery? Not that she looks bad now, but she looks so much better in Egoyan’s previous film Chloe. (long sigh) When I think of Seven Veils, I like it better. Overcoming the trauma of abuse is a fascinating subject. Someone who said they loved me hurt me deeply. Sometimes I have a hard time recognizing that I deserve love. In Jeanine’s struggles, I see my own.
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