‘Seven Veils’ Review: Atom Egoyan’s Cold But Bracing Take on ‘Salome’ – Berlin Film Festival
deadline.comFrom his breakthrough work Family Viewing, which dates back to 1987, Atom Egoyan has been exploring the possibilities of different communication technologies by showing screens within screens, stories within other stories and the ways unconnected stories may merge with each other and with real life.
Seven Veils is named for the Biblical character Salome, whose seductive dancing as she shed those veils earned her a grisly prize: the severed head of John the Baptist, the ascetic prophet who predicted the coming of Jesus Christ.
The title is just as suggestive, however, of Egoyan’s approach to storytelling. One diaphanous layer of Salome’s wrappings drops to reveal another beneath; in the same way, Egoyan story is peeled back, one reveal after another.
It is understandable that, after its world premiere in Toronto, some critics described the film as muddled; for anyone unfamiliar with his source stories, this dense thicket of magic-lantern slides could well be bewildering.
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