The Sweet Hereafter

Year of Release:  1997
Director:  Atom Egoyan
Screenplay:  Atom Egoyan, based on the novel The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks
Starring:  Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, Maury Chaykin, Tom McCamus, Gabrielle Rose, Alberta Watson, Caerthan Banks, Arsinee Khanjian
 Running Time:  112 minutes
Genre:  Drama

In the small rural town of Sam Dent, British Columbia, a school bus crash kills fourteen children.  Lawyer Mitchell Stevens (Holm) arrives in town to persuade the grieving townspeople to hire him to represent them in a class action lawsuit against the town and the bus company.  While some people accept his offer, others are more reluctant and some overtly hostile, as the town's various dark secrets come to the surface.  Meanwhile Stevens is haunted by his troubled relationship with his estranged drug-addict daughter, Zoe (Banks).

This is a deeply powerful and genuinely moving film.  As with many Egoyan films, it uses an unconventional structure, moving back and forth in time, with crucial events and information revealed out of sequence.  Ian Holm gives a devastating performance as the lawyer, who is revealed to be much more than just a sleazy ambulance-chaser.  The heartbreaking scene where he tells a story from his daughter's childhood is possibly the best moment in Holm's distinguished career.  The film has a large ensemble cast all do well, particularly Sarah Polley as troubled fifteen year old Nicole, who survives the crash but is left disabled.  The tone of the film, despite it's subject matter, is more like a dark fairy tale than gritty realism, with repeated references to Robert Browning's retelling of The Pied Piper of Hamlin, and a haunting, medieval-influenced score by Mychael Danna.

      Sarah Polley and Ian Holm face up to The Sweet Hereafter

Exotica

Year of Release:  1994

Director:  Atom Egoyan

Screenplay:  Atom Egoyan

Starring:  Bruce Greenwood, Don McKellar, Mia Kirshner, Elias Koteas, Arsinee Khanjian, Sarah Polley

Running Time:  103 minutes

Genre:  Drama

This dark, multi-layered drama focuses on the staff and clients of a Toronto strip-club called Exotica:  Lonely accountant Francis (Greenwood) is obsessed with a young exotic dancer, Christina (Kirshner), which arouses the jealousy of the club's resident DJ, Eric (Koteas), who is also in love with Christina.  Meanwhile Francis becomes involved with pet-store owner Thomas (McKellar), who runs a smuggling operation based around trading rare animals.

Back in the mid to late 1990s, Atom Egoyan was one of the leading lights of Canadian cinema, and this was the film that really made him a star director.  As with many of his films, various initially apparently unrelated stories, set in the past and present, interweave and coalesce into a whole towards the end.  The film conjures up a distinct feel right from the opening shot, as the credits play over a long tracking shot of a variety of hothouse plants and flowers while Mychael Danna's memorable, sinuous, Indian-influenced score plays and the opening line: "You must ask yourself, what brought them to this point?"  The decor in the Exotica club is full of images of jungle plants.  The film was marketed initially in some places as an erotic thriller, which conjures up images of the kind of cheap movies that come on late-night cable with dull plots and a couple of soft-focus sex scenes, and Exotica  really isn't that at all.  Given the fact that it is set in a strip club obviously there is a fair amount of nudity, mostly in the background, and there is a powerfully sensuous atmosphere in the film, but it is not a sex movies, nor is it really a thriller, although there are thriller elements in it.  It's a well-constructed film, with some great performances, and a fantastic soundtrack (including the best use on film of the late, great Leonard Cohen's song "Everybody Knows").  Not all the various storylines are resolved in the end, but it remains a haunting, powerful and deeply rewarding exploration of grief and desire.       

      Mia Kirshner and Don McKellar in Exotica