49/17
A serious theater director is tasked with recreating her former mentor’s most famous work, the opera Salome. Some disturbing memories from her past will allow her repressed trauma to color the present. This is Amanda Seyfried’s second time starring in a film directed by Atom Egoyan since Chloe (2009). Referenced in Amanda the Jedi Show: I ALMOST Walked Out | The Best and Worst of TIFF 2023 (2023). There’s a fascinating and terrifying Hawthorne story in which a father, a prominent avant-garde physician, is fiercely protective of his daughter. As a child, he gradually introduces her to a deadly poisonous plant. As she matures, anyone who gets too close to her will suffer and die. The plant’s poison is infused into her lifeblood. The woman is both beautiful and terrifying. “Don’t you love,” he asks, “that no one can bring you down?” His answer cuts to the bone. “Father, I would have preferred to love someone.” Jeanine is a theater director trying, like the woman in Hawthorne’s story, to free herself from the shadow of heartless people. Having suffered abuse from her father, mentor, husband, and now an arrogant actor—abuse they call “love”—Jeanine 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 different. “Take away one sense and others are heightened.” I love Egoyan’s films for their depth, surprising twists, and explorations of intriguing themes (passion, misjudgments, abuse, trying to find a way forward after mistakes are made, love, perspectives other than my own, and more). Following a woman adrift in the wake of abuse, Seven Veils continues in typical Egoyan vein. It is set in the Canadian Opera Company building, a few blocks from where I attended the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. While Egoyan spent too much time inside the theater for my taste, I understand why he did it. Egoyan directed the real opera company’s production of Salome and modeled much of it in Seven Veils. Even some of the actors from the actual opera are in the film. Jeanine is skillfully brought to life by Amanda Seyfried. Off topic – why did Seyfried have the 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 more. Moving beyond the trauma of abuse is a fascinating subject. Someone who said they loved me hurt me so much. Sometimes it’s a struggle to see that I’m worthy of love. In Jeanine’s struggles, I see my own.