I never expected to write about filmmakers Atom Egoyan and David Lynch. Not together, at least. But the more I thought about each director, I couldn’t remove myself from both exploring similar themes in most of their works. Lost souls and the crisis of identity in their protagonists seem to reappear.
The Criterion Collection, a boutique distribution label with a filmmaker-first mentality, and Lynch are no strangers to one another. Before its 4K UHD release of LOST HIGHWAY, the label had distributed five of his works plus a documentary on the enigmatic visionary (2016’s DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE). Egoyan and Criterion, however, are strangers. Correction: they were strangers. EXOTICA, Egoyan’s sixth film and the one that established him to international acclaim – first premiered at Cannes before being released in fifty territories worldwide – is a valued addition to the prized collection.
For the longest time, I had dismissed EXOTICA. Its title gave the impression of soft-core sleaze. Something you’d come across late night on Cinemax. The cover art for the initial VHS release didn’t do much to dispel my impression with a woman on her knees in a schoolgirl uniform, her buttoned-down white shirt unfurled and tied as a crop top, all the while a pair of eyes linger above. But the film was met with much enthusiasm by the thumbs-up duo (film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert), and it appeared on numerous Top 10 lists. Still, I resisted any temptation to seek it out. Moving from my formative adolescent years into adulthood, I would sample Atom Egoyan’s filmography here and there, yet this feature remained elusive. When I was figuring things out, I should have watched a drama about wayward souls venturing into a Toronto strip club named Exotica.
Men walk inside, but this story focuses on only one. Francis (Bruce Greenwood) is a regular, and he pays dancer Christina (Mia Kirshner) to perform at his table. Dressed in a schoolgirl uniform to evoke jailbait promiscuity, Christina inspires the jealousy of the establishment’s DJ, Eric (Elias Koteas), who also happens to be her former boyfriend. Eric sits atop a perch in the club and makes insinuations about Exotica’s clientele. His eyes also tend to linger as Christina dances in front of Francis. The dance is mostly talk, but the conversations don’t deal with or about sex. Their connection is straightforward in its presentation. The real challenge is deciphering what it all means.
Other characters are implicated in the plot, overlapping with Francis’s trips to the club and his professional life as a tax auditor. Most peculiar is Tracy (a 15-year-old Sarah Polley), the teenager Francis hires every night to babysit while he goes to the club. They also have a transactional agreement involving cash. The arrangement feels sketchy, as if watching Christina dressed as a schoolgirl is a cognitive suggestion Francis fancies underage girls. (Yes, Jodie Foster in TAXI DRIVER crossed my mind in instances where Francis talks as he drives Tracey home. The conversations had a pensive reverie.)
Atom Egoyan’s masterstroke with EXOTICA is building his characters to such a degree that neither they nor we fully understand where they fall in the relationships of others. Some know very little. Others know a lot but are less revealing. Through flashbacks, Egoyan allows us to see Eric and Christina before Exotica, and how a discovery ultimately affects the choices those unaware ultimately make.
David Lynch’s LOST HIGHWAY (which takes its title from a phrase in the novel Night People), meanwhile, is a brooding mystery transfixed on male anxiety. From the opening credits of a speeding shot of a two-lane road with headlights illuminating the yellow stripes – all paired with road-stripe yellow text popping out of a black abyss as David Bowie’s “I’m Deranged” plays – the film quickly down switches to an unhurried couple’s drama of mounting dread before popping the clutch to a different narrative altogether and reaching maximum RPMs in the final act. By the time it’s over your brains are scrambled eggs with pieces of shell mixed in for good measure.
Lynch doesn’t like to confine his works to a singular genre, though he once described LOST HIGHWAY as a “21st century noir horror film.” It definitely fits the bill as horror noir. But it essentially functions as a surrealist mystery in contemporary Los Angeles. Early on, Bill Pullman’s Fred Madison makes a remark to a police detective that gives pause. On the subject of owning a video camera, Fred says he likes to remember things his own way, and not necessarily the way they happened.
The interplay occurs at the expense of a call Fred’s wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette), made about apparent intruder spying on them. Videotapes arriving in unmarked envelopes contain images outside the residence before cutting to static and going inside to seeing the couple sleeping. Even before the tapes started arriving Lynch gives us enough visual cues to indicate all is not well between Fred and Renee. The problems are there, hovering in an invisible morass – festering frustrations or becoming bad dreams.
Through subsequent scenes of Fred wailing on his tenor sax in a jazz nightclub to then coming home to make love to Renee, it’s the two attending one of those “famous people” parties where LOST HIGHWAY becomes a more twisted ride. The introduction of the film’s Mystery Man (Robert Blake), as he approaches Fred and talks to him in a measured voice, makes your hair stand up. This mildly terrifying event pairs with another unexplained event involving a garage mechanic named Pete (Balthazar Getty). They go against each other, yet intrinsically are weighty in the narrative.
Pete’s turn in the story is such a Lynch move as the director switches gears and Fred disappears. Now we have a young guy who lives at home with his parents, loves to drive and fix cars, and has himself a girlfriend, but he finds himself fixated on a blond named Alice (Arquette again, who may be Renee’s sister or a facsimile of the same woman).
His story is the pulpier one as it includes a femme fatale and a gangster named Mr. Eddy (Robert Loggia) – who totally leans into the ham he’s being served to perform, including pistol-whipping a tailgater after pushing his car off the road and then chastising him about driver safety. The scene makes Mr. Eddy look like a complete nutcase and a bad hombre you don’t cross. The trouble is Alice likes Pete enough to sneak away to motel rendezvous for sex, and she goes as far as to implicate him in a scheme involving robbery and murder to get away from her gangster boss.
The fractured narrative, matched with Lynch’s hauntingly obsessive sound design, the sparseness of the interior scenes, and the slowed-down nature in which the characters move and talk, leaves you with more questions than answers. Better to let it absorb you in a dark cocoon, as Angelo Badalamenti’s score starts as a sweet dream before becoming an aural nightmare.
As far as bonus features go, Criterion did not skimp on the extras. While LOST HIGHWAY’s assortment doesn’t include anything specifically produced by the label, it is a massive improvement compared to Kino Lorber’s barebones 2019 Blu-ray. Highlights include Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch (81 minutes), Toby Keeler’s 1997 documentary that pulls back the curtain and allows us a behind-the-scenes look at Lynch’s approach while filming LOST HIGHWAY. He’s still cryptic about his decisions, so we get soundbites from co-writer Barry Gifford, composer Angelo Badalamenti, and actors Patricia Arquette, Bill Pullman, and Jack Nance, and Dean Stockwell, amongst others. A few EPK features with Lynch and the making of LOST HIGHWAY are also included.
Now, EXOTICA is mostly archival programs, except for one conversation. Atom Egoyan and Sarah Polley sat down this past summer and discussed the film. With Polley transitioning from being in front of the camera to the director’s chair, the conversation isn’t just an actor and a director reminiscing about work but two filmmakers exploring the themes of EXOTICA.
Atom Egoyan’s evolution as a filmmaker is well represented by three of his shorts: Peep Show (made while he was attending the University of Toronto), En passant/In Passing (made to celebrate the city of Montreal’s 350th birthday), and Artaud Double Bill (which was part of a 2007 anthology film, which was commissioned for the sixth edition of the Cannes Film Festival).
Also included is Egoyan’s film CALENDAR, which can be viewed with an exclusive video introduction by the director.
If you are a David Lynch or Atom Egoyan fan, you can’t go wrong with either of these titles. EXOTICA is what put Egoyan on the map, so it is a valued addition to the Criterion Collection. The 4K restoration of LOST HIGHWAY is a substantial upgrade. However, it would have been great to include at least one interview recorded by Criterion with new reflections and insights. Those on the fence may want to wait for future Barnes & Noble’s 50% off Criterion discs or when the label has its very own flash sales.
