Atom Egoyan: "Some directors are monsters who abuse their power."

BarcelonaElegant and exquisitely kind, Atom Egoyan is also one of the great Canadian directors – born in Cairo in 1960 – of recent decades, responsible for fascinating works such as Exotic (1994), The sweet future (1997) and Ararat (2002). With Seven veils, which will premiere on the Filmin platform on July 11, Egoyan signs his most complete film of the last decade, a meditation on the turbulent process of creating a work of art in which Amanda Seyfried plays the director of the new version of a production of the opera Salome which she herself worked on as a young woman. Inherited from her mentor, the project is a poisoned gift that stirs up family traumas and collides with the new sensibility of a post-Me Too society.

The setting in which it takes place Seven veils It is a staging of the opera SalomeYou already directed that opera three decades ago.

— Theater is my first passion. I started writing and directing plays when I was a child, and in 1996, the artistic director of the Canadian Opera Company saw my film. Exotic (1994) and thought: "The person who directed this film would love it." SalomeI didn't understand what he meant until I delved deeper into the script and realized it shared many ideas about the danger of looking at something with desire and distancing oneself from oneself, which is one of the obsessions that runs through my filmography.

Was it easy to direct then?

— No, it's a very difficult opera, because it doesn't work as a traditional theater piece. I'm a great reader of Oscar Wilde, and for me, De profundis It is the best love letter written in the English language, but I was not familiar with Salome, which isn't like his more popular works. In a sense, it's overwritten and uses very flowery language, but that's what makes it a fantastic little book. The work is in the literary tradition of repressed desire and its consequences and explores the violence of not having something you feel you deserve. Clearly, Wilde is talking about his own sexuality. He wrote it just before that insane trial that destroyed him.

How was it to re-address those themes and reasons forExotic thirty years later in such a different film?

— It was a unique opportunity. The first time I directed. Salome I did it between Exotic (1994) and The sweet future (1997), which deal with the subject of abuse in a very discreet way. And in the opera, I took the opportunity to show the act of abuse in all its violence. But three decades later, returning to those themes, I realized that the culture had changed a lot because of Me Too, and that it was better for the film's protagonist to be a woman. It was like the fantasy of taking the person I was at 36 and reinterpreting her in a way that makes sense in our present. And I was really looking forward to reuniting with Amanda [Seyfried], with whom I had previously worked on Chloe (2009).

You were the first director to showcase Seyfried's talent beyond her usual Hollywood roles.

— I will never forget the casting he did for ChloeIt was before the premiere of Mamma mia! (2008), and I thought, "Oh my God, he's incredible, he's a star." I hadn't seen anything of his before, and I had a feeling I hadn't had since my first films, when I would go to the theater and discover a new actor who was really exciting to work with. Amanda and I promised each other we would work together again after Chloe, and it took us fifteen years, but we did it. I love her ability to express emotions. What makes her very interesting as an actress is her availability for all kinds of projects. And she's made interesting decisions in her career; she's participating in a very good series called The dropout.

The protagonist of Seven veils She's a director who must helm a production of Salomé that stirs up her past while she navigates a complicated family situation. How much of you is there in her?

— Some of the decisions Janine makes are, in fact, decisions I made myself. But in the film, they're just choices she makes—I don't want to imply in any way that they're valid or artistically successful decisions. One of the things that interests me about the character is that I don't try to present her as a brilliant director. The opera company expects her to simply reproduce the previous production and not contribute new ideas, which leaves her in a vulnerable position. In the Hollywood version of this story, she would triumph, go onstage, and everyone would applaud her. But here she takes a step back. And perhaps the best directorial decision she makes during the film is to ask her husband's lover to turn a painting, because that allows her to obtain her mother's confession. It's a very private and personal scene, but perfect in terms of emotional catharsis.

This is clearly a post-Me Too film, and it discusses intimacy coordinators with a certain amount of humor and ironic detachment. What do you think about this figure?

— I think they're necessary because there are directors who have abused their power. However, I've directed a lot of erotic scenes and I've always taken great care of the actors, and I think they would tell you the same. So the idea of someone else talking to my actors is new and strange to me. In fact, the first time I worked with intimacy coordination was in the editing of Salome that we did in 2023. But I know that some directors are monsters who abuse their power. I know too many stories of directors taking advantage of the situation. Be that as it may, it's now mandatory to shoot with an intimacy coordinator. And for some directors, like the stunt coordinator, it's a very useful figure and allows them to focus on other things. The problem is that in many of the erotic scenes I've shot, in films like The sweet future either The liquidatorThe dramatic conflict lies in the sexual act, so I don't know how I could direct these scenes with such a figure at my side. Besides, cinema and art are never, by their nature, safe spaces. But I don't know if we can afford to judge these things, because, as I said, there are many victims of abuses of power.

Do you think the implementation of these best practices may have led to a certain fear of addressing eroticism and sexuality in contemporary cinema?

— In the case of independent and low-budget films, I don't think that's the case. That said, many of the abuses have occurred in productions of this type, so it's all paradoxical. I don't know what I would have done in the past if I had been forced to work with an intimacy coordinator. Exotic We shot in Ontario, where it's illegal to show someone underage—or pretending to be—in a sexual act. And in that film, Christina was wearing a school uniform at a strip club, so in a way, she was portraying someone underage. For me, that was an important and necessary detail, but there was a norm, and we were challenging it. The line is always at the limit of what's acceptable and what's not. But I also understand that what Bertolucci did in Last Tango in Paris It wasn't right. You can't surprise an actor like that. You can't use an actor's shock as part of your dramatic material.

One of the themes of Seven veils It's like making a work personal. How do you approach this question after almost four decades of experience?

— The films I've written, directed, and produced all come from a very personal place. But even in the films I've directed from other people's scripts, there are characters who speak to me in some profound way. For example, in Chloe (2009) there are very personal elements, and also in Remember. But Condemned, despite having personal things like a certain sensitivity or the way of staging, it is perhaps my least interesting film, because it could have been directed by another director. On the other hand, in Chloe and in Remember I recognize my temperament and my curiosity about human beings, it is evident in how I film the story.

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