Filmmaker Atom Egoyan is at his best when he’s mining the traumatic past of a character, interweaving their formative suffering with a present existential crisis. It’s something he did memorably in films like The Sweet Hereafter, and it’s an effective approach in his most recent feature, Seven Veils. The concept is compelling meta: Up-and-coming theater director Jeanine (Amanda Seyfried) is asked to helm a re-staging of Salome, an opera once masterfully directed by her late mentor. As she immerses herself in the production, which Egoyan actually directed twice for the Canadian Opera Company, she begins to grapple with damage inflicted on her by her father—and potentially by her mentor himself.
SEVEN VEILS ★★★ (3/4 stars)
Directed by: Atom Egoyan
Written by: Atom Egoyan
Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Rebecca Liddiard, Douglas Smith, Mark O’Brien, Vinessa Antoine
Running time: 107 mins.
Egoyan first directed Salome in 1996 and remounted it in 2023, a span of time that encouraged him to consider whether the controversial opera would have newfound resonance around rising concerns about the implications of sexual misconduct. He was able to fuse the fictional film with his theater production, using actual opera stars to play the roles of the onscreen actors. As Jeanine, Seyfried, in a dynamic, complexly-wrought performance, directs soprano Ambur Braid and baritone Michael Kupfer-Radecky as the leads in her Salome. The behind-the-scenes behavior, which includes Kupfer-Radecky’s Johan lecherously coming on to props manager Clea (Rebecca Liddiard), is dramatized, but there’s a sense of undeniable realism to the staged rehearsals and performances that clearly can’t be faked.
It’s made clear early on that Jeanine has only been given this opportunity due to a request from Charles, her deceased mentor. She announces she will only make “small but meaningful changes” to Charles’s staging, which alarms the opera company’s executives. They refuse to even include her own director’s notes in the program, opting to publish those by Charles instead. Jeanine struggles to wrangle the difficult cast, especially Johan, who says the technical aspects of the stage production aren’t his concern. And, meanwhile, Jeanine is living separately—both physical and emotionally—from her husband (Mark O’Brien), who is sleeping with Jeanine’s mother’s caregiver, Dimitra (Maia Jae Bastidas), while she’s away. Her mother Margot (Lynne Griffin) has dementia, but occasionally seems aware that Jeanine was abused by her father under the guise of creating art.
It all comes to crescendo as Jeanine nears opening night. She cracks during a podcast interview where the host insinuates she was abused by Charles as well as her father. Flashbacks interweave themselves with reality, reminiscent of the protagonist’s breakdown in Tár. At the same time, Clea has been documenting her process of creating John the Baptiste’s severed head, which includes being groped by Johan as she prepares his face for the mold. Should she release the video, incriminating Johan and the theater company, or use it as leverage for her understudy girlfriend Rachel (Vinessa Antoine) to get an opportunity to replace Ambur in the opera? Egoyan interrogates these scenes without prejudice, although he’s clearly interested those who are complicit in moments of abuse.
At times, Seven Veils makes for a challenging watch. The extended sequences of the opera, which use the filmmaker’s actual staging, sometimes drag on. But his interest in Salome, both as a Biblical figure and as a character, is compelling, especially as he parallels her struggle at the hands of her father with that of Jeanine. It helps that Seyfried, in her second time working with Egoyan, is committed and thoughtful in her approach. It’s a standout performance that helps makes the difficult aspects of the film more palatable to the audience. As the writer, Egoyan purposefully doesn’t connect every dot in the story. There are questions and uncertainties that linger once the movie ends. But like difficult, repressed memories, there is no easy resolution to be found.
