Egoyan's Exotic World

Atom Egoyan is talking about his new film, "Exotica," while wrestling with a messy club sandwich at the Four Seasons Hotel (Please see review, right.) The film's distributor is working Egoyan very hard: six cities in seven days. The promotional tour involves lunching with journalists, discussing his work at screenings, like the one at the Harvard Film Archive on February 21st, and producing an answer when asked whether he plays the guitar professionally or for his own enjoyment.

Although maybe a bit tired, Egoyan is relaxed and approachable, even circulating a picture of his wife and young son, who appears in utero with his mother, Arsinee Khanjian, in "Exotica." Egoyan also seems to have figured out what people are interested in learning from film-makers, since he offers the same information at the Four Seasons luncheon and the Carpenter Center screening, with almost identical wording.

Egoyan, born in Cairo to Armenian parents, moved to Canada when he was three. They were the only Armenian family in an otherwise Anglo community, where the director says he "tried desperately to assimilate at all costs." With warmth characteristic throughout the afternoon, he recounts anecdotes from those times. "My sister's name is Eve," Egoyan says, "I had to go through my childhood with jokes about Atom and Eve.'" The director was attracted to drama from an early age, finding in it a way of creating, "a system where people could behave the way I wanted them to, since so much of the world around me was not behaving the way I wanted it to."

While majoring in international relations and classical guitar at the University of Toronto, he began making short films. Egoyan went on to direct several episodes of "The Twilight Zone" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," before releasing his first feature, "Next of Kin," in 1984.

Egoyan and his 1986 film, "Family Viewing," gained international media attention when director Wim Wenders declined his award for "Wings of Desire" at the 1987 Montreal Film Festival saying, "This is a great honour, but I ask you to give the award to my Canadian colleague, Atom Egoyan." Since then, Egoyan has become a regular at every major international festival, a member of the jury at the 1995 Sundance Festival, and a darling of both critics and audiences for films such as "Speaking Parts" (1989), "The Adjuster" (1991) and "Calendar" (1993). Egoyan is currently working on Elsewhereness, an opera for which he has written the libretto, with composer Rodney Sharman. He is also adapting Russell Banks' novel, The Sweet Hereafter, for film.

Egoyan, who has written the scripts for all his films, finds that the biggest challenge of film-making is "trying to preserve the energy that goes into the writing process; trying to keep the process of making the film as organic as its writing." Too often, Egoyan finds this energy missing from films which are "just executed" by the director, "as opposed to trying to maintain the ongoing process of creativity. The only way I can do that is by creating a structure where I am not quite sure what the chemistry is going to result in."

Egoyan credits his training in music with the complex structure of his stories, whose plots usually interweave different characters and times. "I'm really attracted to counterpoint," he explains, "and the idea of developing several strands at the same time, having those elements all work off of each other. For me it's a very satisfying way of structuring a narrative."

Egoyan says that a theme throughout his work is "people who are missing, and the impact of the loss of those people on the characters," which he describes as "confused, in a state of flux." In "Exotica," several characters attempt to restructure their lives after the loss of loved ones. Zoe, the club's owner, tries to free herself from the dead mother by grounding herself through pregnancy. Francis, the central character, develops strange obsessions as a means of resolving tragic losses in his past.

Throughout his career, and particularly with "Calendar," Egoyan's use of video in his films has provided a way of exploring absence. The director says that "with video, you are very aware that it's an image, calling attention to itself as an image, and allowing a certain degree of self consciousness which I find really, really exciting." Egoyan, however, is interested in moving away from video, as revealed by his reaction when questioned about his recurrent use of the medium. "I thought I'd never be asked that question again," he says, "but I'll answer it one last time: It's interesting, when you start using something, it then becomes your identifying mark. It becomes a sort of trap."

Video has been one of the instruments used by Egoyan to explore the ways in which people interact. "I think," he says, "that human relationships are a lot more frail and much more tentative than films make them out to be. In most films, people just get together and make connections, things happen. I've never been comfortable with that. I think it's much more realistic to show how precarious and rare the meeting of two people is."

These observations are pertinent to the characters' interactions in "Exotica," which partially originated from his interest in the idea of a man driving home the babysitter. "This is the first time that a younger woman will be alone with an older man, and there is an inherent tension in their involvement. It's impossible to be silent during that trip home because it becomes very tense, and so someone has to speak. But what do you speak of?"

Of course, a way of ending uncomfortable silences is by filling them up with babbling, something that Egoyan is familiar with. "When I went to a table dancing club in San Francisco, I really identified with Thomas [in "Exotica"]. I started talking, and all this nonsense was pouring out of me. I was going on and on because I was so nervous."

Referring to that character, who goes to the ballet with extra tickets to pick up potential dates who want to see the performance, Egoyan jokes, "If my movie starts a trend, I'll be very pleased."