SEVEN VEILS - Mark Reviews Movies

Seven Veils, XYZ Films / Variance Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 6, 2025

Writer/director Atom Egoyan blends two projects into one with Seven Veils. As some background, the filmmaker has also directed opera over the course of his career, including a 1996 production of Richard Strauss' Salome, which was popular and well-received enough that the Canadian Opera Company asked Egoyan to revive it a couple years back. While reconfiguring and staging that opera, the director simultaneously set out to make this movie, which takes place behind the scenes of a fictional director's efforts to re-stage a popular and well-received production of the Strauss opera.

If that sounds fascinating, the premise of Egoyan's movie most certainly is. With as much access as the filmmaker is willing to give himself to the ins and outs of his own process and the potential drama happening backstage, the movie holds up something like a funhouse mirror to Egoyan's experiences on the opera production. Parts of it seem quite authentic, as Jeanine (Amanda Seyfried), the fictional director, deals with trying to make a more-than-a-century-old opera relevant to modern times, while also confronting the egos of her performers, the particulars of props and various bits of staging, and an ongoing battle with the company's management, who aren't exactly happy with all of the choices the director is making.

Then, there's the warped part of the mirror. In that part of this narrative, it's all about Jeanine's very specific past and uncertain present. The character has a very personal connection to the company's earlier mounting of Salome, working as a sort of intern under that production's recently deceased director. She's trying to get out of the shadow of that man, which is quite difficult when everyone loves what the man did with the opera and, especially, because the director put so much of what he knew about Jeanie's personal life into the show.

This element is much shakier than the rest. That's not simply because Egoyan intentionally makes it so, on account of Jeanine's own emotional conflict and psychological turmoil over everything this production brings up within her. This study of those assorted doubts and traumas, set against the backdrop of the process of bringing the opera to the stage for an audience, is at the core of the movie, and it often feels half-considered and as if it's separated from everything else going on in the story.

Some of that issue is probably a simple matter of logistics. Seyfried and some members of the movie's cast had no role in the production of the opera itself, of course, and one can sense that disconnect as Jeanine wanders the theater (It was shot at Toronto's Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, which is quite the impressive space and a joy to explore here), a pair of understudies—Luke (Douglas Smith) and Rachel (Vinessa Antoine)—discuss roles they'll likely never have a chance to sing, and prop master Clea (Rebecca Liddiard) records her work making the severed head of John the Baptist for the show.

For those who don't know the opera (or the Oscar Wilde play it was based on or, for that matter, the Biblical story that inspired both), Egoyan does make the fundamentals of the characters and the basic plot clear almost from the top. The opera and the staging of Egoyan's production become far more engaging than the behind-the-scenes drama, especially since the movie appears to incorporate several rehearsals and even some footage of a public performance. One wonders if a straightforward documentary, with Egoyan himself dealing with whatever real challenges he might have faced, would have made for a more enlightening experience.

Instead, Jeanine, who's also dealing with a trial separation from her husband (played by Mark O'Brien), explains everything that happened to her—an affair with the initial show's director and the suggestion of abuse by her father, who was somehow connected to the company and that director—by way of a journal she's keeping. Egoyan's screenplay tells us everything by way of Jeanine's persistent voiceover, and that storytelling device only makes the character feel more distanced from the real production we're watching being brought to life.

To be fair, Seyfried is compelling in the role, trying to keep this information close to the chest and becoming increasingly distraught as she realizes the details of her life amount to an open secret among members of the company. There's more backstage drama, obviously, including Clea trying to convince her ex-girlfriend Ambur, with the real show's lead soprano Ambur Braid presumably playing a version of herself, to give Rachel, the prop maker's current girlfriend, a shot on stage. Then, there are the rumors about the opera's lead baritone Johann, with singer Michael Kupfer-Radecky playing a character who is presumably unlike him—because all of that gossip turns out to be true.

Much of this ends up feeling pieced together without too much consideration for how it connects narratively or thematically with the opera itself. Considering that Egoyan assembled Seven Veils as a double-duty act of creative inspiration, the movie is somewhat impressive. For as much as it's about the drama happening with the players in the wings of the production, however, it certainly says something that the story seems most alive and genuine when it's focused on what's happening on the stage, as well as the specifics of how this interpretation of the opera gets there.

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