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List Price: $9.99 | | Label: Miramax
Salesrank: 36522
Released: November 16, 1999 |
| Our Price: $20.00 |
| Used Price: $7.47 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Forbidden desires and dangerous intrigue generate sizzling heat in this erotic thriller! At a sexy strip club called Exotica, three strangers -- an obsessive man, an erotic table dancer, and the club's mysterious D.J. -- share much more than is apparent at first glance! As their secret passions grow, they become more deeply entangled in an inescapable web of jealousy, deceit, and revenge! The powerfully seductive hit EXOTICA is gripping entertainment -- you won't be able to take your eyes off it!
Description of Exotica:
In spite of its atrociously misleading packaging, Exotica is a beguiling mystery by enigmatic Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan, in which people and their relationships are not what they seem. What at first appear to be disparate stories of a tormented tax auditor, a lonely pet-shop owner, and a sensitive stripper and her coworkers gradually merge to reveal a larger, interconnected portrait. The sequences involving Mia Kirshner's schoolgirl stripper are particularly engrossing because of her character's intelligence and the scenes' deeper subtext. Indeed, Exotica is less about stripping than about fragile human relationships, and it is not until the truly revelatory final scene that we are able to fully absorb the film's deeper meaning. --Bryan Reesman
Exotica Reviews:
Masterpiece Few Know About 
2009-10-14 - This film is a dreamy masterpiece that few seem to be aware of. Atom Egoyan is a Canadian filmmaker who has fallen on hard times since the bottom of the independent film market has collapsed. His older films are still available and this is one of the best. The story involves a man being investigated for smuggling exotic animals species into Canada illegally, a man whose daughter was sexually abused and murdered several years ago and he was initially accused of the murder, and a young couple working in a sex club. The relationship between all is revealed gradually and it becomes apparent that what people are on the surface isn't necessarily their whole personage. A wonderful film that doesn't suffer from repeated versions. A very compassionate filmmaker who cares deeply about people made this film a masterpiece.
vhs tape exotia
2009-05-15 - The vhs tape came in a timely manner in great shape. I would recomend this seller to all my friends. Very pleased with this purchase. Would buy from them again.
3.5 stars out of 4
2009-03-01 - The Bottom Line:
A twisting and winding tale of pain and loss and deception all whirling around a strip club, Exotica is a movie that requires attention while watching but rewards the viewer with a clever and human mystery that all makes sense in the end; it's quite a film.
Boring, long, wrong title! 
2008-07-11 - If you buy this movie thinking that you buy an exotic or "erotic" (judging by the cover) movie you are WRONG! The movie is so boring and the story so long and stupid that the director should have definately picked another title for it! Exotic? where? This is one of those "delicatessen" movies that a few people judge as good because some "real" reviewers (were they drunk?) judged as good,
There isn't really anything interesting about it and there isn't anything that keeps you from wanting to watch it to the end (besides the question: when does this movie get cool?), so don't waste your time and money on it!
More of a woman's POV movie than might be expected
2008-04-19 - Atom Egoyan's Exotica is an outstanding movie. I have seen Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter (1997) which is also very good. A father's (obsessive) love for his daughter(s) is featured in both movies, consequently the theme must mean something special to Egoyan. He is a most talented and original movie maker, a Canadian as are his players, Bruce Greenwood, (Francis Brown, the accountant whose daughter was murdered), Sarah Polley, (Tracey, the high school girl), and Mia Kirshner, (Christina, the exotic dancer). His wife, Arsinee Khanjian and Polley were also featured in The Sweet Hereafter.
What really makes the movie is Egoyan's use of time and action sequence. He cuts up the chronological order of events and then presents them in a dramatic way. This is not so easy to do. Christopher Nolan in Memento (2000) used the same technique to great advantage. I have come late to such a technique and would love to master it myself. I worked on it last year and a couple of years before. You can't just scissor it and then paste it back together. Something must be gained from reversing the order of events. When Eric and Christina are shown walking the fields in a long line of people I jumped to the conclusion that Tracey would be found dead. We don't learn that Francis lost his daughter until the film is nearly finished.
The psychology of Francis and the young girls is interesting. Christina says she gave something to him and he gave something to her. This vagueness with its unmistakable sexuality is something that always exists between young girls and older men. And, as Egoyan observes, there are rules and awkwardness, and confused emotions. However the girl wants it made unmistakably clear that she is desired physically and just talk is almost never sufficient. She often doesn't know whether she really wants to be "taken" fully, and of course that is usually, shall we say, problematic. Some great subtly is required in handled such a theme, and Egoyan realizes that. His character Francis Brown is content with fantasy and does not touch at all.
This film would have found a larger audience except for the title, the theme, and the milieu. The female audience for the most part didn't even consider watching the movie since, as one woman said, I thought it was just another movie with an older man lusting after a girl half his age. That theme bores women to death. But surprisingly at the IMDb a viewer asks how women feel about the film and several write in to say that they liked it. Another poster remarks that women over forty actually liked Exotica in higher percentages than males.
I thought the veracious and business-like depiction of the exotic dancer club was well done. The very nice side plot with the gay animal importer was just a perfect fit for the main plot. Egoyan wrote the script. It is a great script. So much surprises. It's almost too good. For me, since I have seen so many, many movies, something different, some surprises in plot, in character, in treatment are always welcome.
And the plot does surprise. Even when the protagonist, Francis waits outside the club to shoot Eric, Egoyan turns the situation on its head by having Eric appear from the side and explain something that changes Francis's attitude toward him.
I am being vague because I don't want to spoil the story. Some movies--most movies I would say, since I go back to the generation that would go into the theatre and sit down during the middle of the movie; and then four or five hours later, realize, "This is where I came in"--in most movies to know the ending or the plot would not spoil the movie. We know so and so dies at the end. What is interesting is how he dies, how the actions develops. But in this movie to know the plot would take something away.
I think. I'm not sure. Anyway Francis is a tax auditor who lost his daughter when she was less than eight years old. She was murdered. The police initially thought he did it, but he was found innocent and the murderer was apprehended and convicted. But Francis is left hollow and tries to bring her back in a way by having teenage girls "babysit" his nonexistent daughter. Egoyan teases us near the beginning by showing Francis and Tracey in his car as he drops her off at her home giving her some money and asking, "Are you free Thursday?" Very near the end of the movie we find that Tracey had a precursor in that babysitting role. You might be able to guess who it was.
The sound track features "Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen.
