Seven Veils
Seven Veils
Blog Article
Fifteen years after starring in “Chloe,” Amanda Seyfried has re-teamed with Canadian director Atom Egoyan for another daring, psychosexual film that resists easy explanation. Egoyan has always delved right into fraught familial ties without shying away from ugliness, and “Seven Veils” is perhaps his most overt exploration of familial trauma.
The film follows Jeanine (Seyfried), a theater director making her return to opera by mounting a production of Salome. The play, originally written by Oscar Wilde, is a telling of the classical Biblical story of a woman demanding the head of John the Baptist. In Wilde’s play, Salome wants the head so that she can finally kiss his lips. As a living man, John the Baptist scorns Salome, refusing to look at her or acknowledge her affections. This rejection leads to the great injustice of his murder. The opera version of the play follows the same narrative, letting song translate Salome’s heartbreak and the overall tragedy of the events.
When she was younger, Jeanine studied under Charles, a brilliant director whose death has left a hole in her life. It was his dying wish for her to direct this remount of Salome, a pointed choice that gestures to their history. Her memories of him are intertwined with memories of her late father Harold (Ryan McDonald), whose relationship with her was characterized by unhealthy obsession. In the present, Jeanine is separated from her husband Paul (Mark O’Brien), unbeknownst to their young daughter Lizzie (Maya Misaljevic). They’re both back home with Jeanine’s mother Margot (Lynne Griffin), who is being looked after full time by her nurse Dimitra (Maia Jae Bastidas). On top of mounting such a large opera production, Jeanine privately worries that Paul and Dimitra are secretly involved, seeing each other in her mother’s house. Not that her relationship with her mother is much better, as the shadow of her father looms large in their lives. When asked what her father did to Jeanine, her mother’s answer is always the same: “He loved her too much.”
Jeanine directs Salome as if it were a straight play, obsessing over minute details of performance, props and stage directions. Her frequent interruptions to rehearsal and changes to the production itself often confuse the actors and alarm management, especially Charles’s widow Beatrice (Lanette Ware). There’s even more backstage drama with Clea (Rebecca Liddiard) who has an uncomfortable time with the opera’s temperamental and chauvinist lead Johann (Michael Kupfer-Radecky). Like Jeanine, Clea has personal ties to the production as well—she used to date the other lead Ambur (Ambur Braid) and is currently with her understudy Rachel (Vinessa Antoine). Completing the web is the other understudy Luke (Douglas Smith), who seems to harbor feelings for Jeanine. None of these connections are explored fully, keeping the focus on the production details of Salome.
Memories of Charles and her father haunt Jeanine throughout rehearsals, leading to large displays of emotion and anguish that she refuses to hide from her collaborators. Everyone can tell that directing this opera is a struggle for her, but her position dissuades them from speaking plainly. As Jeanine works, there’s a sense that whispers follow her wherever she goes. One of the most affecting recurring images in “Seven Veils” is a video of a young Jeanine blindfolded in the forest, filmed by her father in different settings and poses. These are memories Jeanine shared with Charles that he later incorporated into Salome. This exemplifies the odd nature of their connection—an affair brought to light by a perverse, unbalanced artistic collaboration.
Seyfried plays Jeanine as a woman possessed by the traumas of her past, aggressively seeking some form of emotional catharsis. McDonald is effectively haunting as her late father, his image standing in for both him and Charles. We are left to imagine that Charles had the same quiet madness in his eyes, disguised as artistic passion. But all we really know for sure is Jeanine’s pain! There’s an air of mystery to the film that Egoyan never quite resolves. The third act of “Seven Veils” has the feeling of a big climax, leading up to a large emotional crescendo. But the revelations don’t happen on stage. As the characters crash into each other in lasting and meaningful ways, we’re left as an audience to wonder if the emotional revelations will stick. Perhaps the point of it all was to liberate Jeanine—and by extension everyone else—from the ghosts of the past.
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