35/41
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 marks Amanda Seyfried’s second time starring in a film directed by Atom Egoyan after Chloe (2009). Out | Best and Worst of TIFF 2023 (2023). There’s a compelling and haunting story from Hawthorne in which a father, a prominent avant-garde physician, fiercely protects his daughter. As a child, he gradually introduces her to a deadly poisonous plant. By the time she matures, anyone who gets too close to her will suffer and die. The plant’s poison seeps into her lifeblood. The woman is beautiful and terrifying. "Don’t you love," he asks "that no one can bring you down?" Her answer cuts to the bone. "Dad, I would rather love someone." Janine 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" – Janine tries to heal and transcend them without losing what is essential and good about herself. She struggles to free herself from the traps she has been set. To find something different."Take away one feeling and others are heightened." I love Egoyan’s films for their depth, surprising twists, and exploration of intriguing themes (passion, wrong judgments, abuse, trying to find a way forward after mistakes are made, love, perspectives other than my own, and more). Following a woman who is reeling from abuse, Seven Veils continues in typical Egoyan vein. It takes place in the Canadian Opera Company building a few blocks from where I saw the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. While Egoyan spent too much time in the theater for my taste, I understand why it was done that way. Egoyan directed the opera company’s real-life production of Salome and shaped much of it into Seven Veils. Even some of the actors in the real opera are in the film. Janine is ably brought to life by Amanda Seyfried. Off topic—why did Seyfried get surgery? Not that she looks bad now, but she looked much better in Egoyan’s previous film, Chloe. (long sigh) Thinking about Seven Veils makes me like it more. Moving beyond the trauma of abuse is a fascinating theme. Someone who said they loved me hurt me a lot. Sometimes it’s hard to see that I’m worthy of love. In Jeanine’s battles, I see mine.