• Latest
  • Trending
Seven Veils Review

Seven Veils Review: Peeling Back Layers of Trauma and Appropriation

Squid Game Season 3 Review

Squid Game Season 3 Review: No Happy Endings Here

Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning Review

‘Final Reckoning’ Nears $550 M While Budget Questions Linger

11 hours ago
Jon Watts The Fantastic Four

Jon Watts Explains Pandemic Fatigue Behind Fantastic Four Exit

11 hours ago
Love Island USA Hannah Fields

Inside the Vote That Sent Hannah Home—and Why Viewers Aren’t Over It

11 hours ago
Chicago P.D. Drops Toya Turner

Chicago P.D. Season 13 Starts Without Newest Detective as NBC Confirms Cast Cut

11 hours ago
Love Island USA Season 7 Review

Love Island USA Season 7 Review: Summer’s Hottest Guilty Pleasure Returns

The Carters Hurts to Love You Review

The Carters: Hurts to Love You Review: Angel Carter’s Courageous Testament to Surviving Family Dysfunction

Rematch Review

Rematch Review: Sloclap’s Ambitious Football Experiment Falls Short of Goals

Got to Get Out Review

Got to Get Out Review: The Most Interesting Broken Game on Television

The Bear Season 4 Review

The Bear Season 4 Review: A Contemplative, Cathartic Final Course

Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey Share Viral Kiss as Dinosaur Franchise Roars Back

23 hours ago
Sovereign

Offerman’s Radical Turn Powers July Thriller Sovereign

24 hours ago
  • Home
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Gazettely Review Guidelines
Friday, June 27, 2025
GAZETTELY
  • Home
  • Movie and TV News
    Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning Review

    ‘Final Reckoning’ Nears $550 M While Budget Questions Linger

    Love Island USA Hannah Fields

    Inside the Vote That Sent Hannah Home—and Why Viewers Aren’t Over It

    Chicago P.D. Drops Toya Turner

    Chicago P.D. Season 13 Starts Without Newest Detective as NBC Confirms Cast Cut

    Scarlett Johansson

    Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey Share Viral Kiss as Dinosaur Franchise Roars Back

    Sovereign

    Offerman’s Radical Turn Powers July Thriller Sovereign

    Brokeback Mountain

    Eastwood Anecdote Reopens Debate Over Brokeback Mountain’s Oscar Upset

    MasterChef

    Sri Lanka Fires Up Its First MasterChef as ITN Takes Format into 71st Territory

    Low Life

    Disney+ Dives Into 1970s Treasure Hunt With K-Drama Low Life

    Denis Villeneuve

    Denis Villeneuve Takes the Helm of Bond 26 in Amazon’s Franchise Reboot

  • Movie and TV Reviews
    Squid Game Season 3 Review

    Squid Game Season 3 Review: No Happy Endings Here

    Jon Watts The Fantastic Four

    Jon Watts Explains Pandemic Fatigue Behind Fantastic Four Exit

    Love Island USA Season 7 Review

    Love Island USA Season 7 Review: Summer’s Hottest Guilty Pleasure Returns

    The Carters Hurts to Love You Review

    The Carters: Hurts to Love You Review: Angel Carter’s Courageous Testament to Surviving Family Dysfunction

    Got to Get Out Review

    Got to Get Out Review: The Most Interesting Broken Game on Television

    The Bear Season 4 Review

    The Bear Season 4 Review: A Contemplative, Cathartic Final Course

    Daydreamers Review

    Daydreamers Review: Saigon’s Stylish But Stumbling Vampires

    Most People Die On Sundays Review

    Most People Die On Sundays Review: Resisting the Cathartic Release

    Surviving Ohio State Review

    Surviving Ohio State Review: The Weight of Witness

  • Game Reviews
    Rematch Review

    Rematch Review: Sloclap’s Ambitious Football Experiment Falls Short of Goals

    Chronicles of the Wolf Review

    Chronicles of the Wolf Review: Forging a Path Through the Past

    JDM Japanese Drift Master Review

    JDM: Japanese Drift Master Review – When Mechanics Meet Manga

    Blood Bar Tycoon Review

    Blood Bar Tycoon Review: A Bloody Good Idea, Poorly Executed

    Ghost Frequency Review

    Ghost Frequency Review: All Atmosphere, No Conclusion

    Death Stranding 2 On the Beach Review 1

    Death Stranding 2: On the Beach Review – Kojima’s Outback Odyssey

    RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army Review

    RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army Review: The Detective Who Couldn’t Investigate

    Still Wakes the Deep: Siren’s Rest Review

    Still Wakes the Deep: Siren’s Rest Review – Revisiting a Sunken Legacy

    TRON: Catalyst Review

    TRON: Catalyst Review: More Style Than Substance

  • The Bests
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Movie and TV News
    Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning Review

    ‘Final Reckoning’ Nears $550 M While Budget Questions Linger

    Love Island USA Hannah Fields

    Inside the Vote That Sent Hannah Home—and Why Viewers Aren’t Over It

    Chicago P.D. Drops Toya Turner

    Chicago P.D. Season 13 Starts Without Newest Detective as NBC Confirms Cast Cut

    Scarlett Johansson

    Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey Share Viral Kiss as Dinosaur Franchise Roars Back

    Sovereign

    Offerman’s Radical Turn Powers July Thriller Sovereign

    Brokeback Mountain

    Eastwood Anecdote Reopens Debate Over Brokeback Mountain’s Oscar Upset

    MasterChef

    Sri Lanka Fires Up Its First MasterChef as ITN Takes Format into 71st Territory

    Low Life

    Disney+ Dives Into 1970s Treasure Hunt With K-Drama Low Life

    Denis Villeneuve

    Denis Villeneuve Takes the Helm of Bond 26 in Amazon’s Franchise Reboot

  • Movie and TV Reviews
    Squid Game Season 3 Review

    Squid Game Season 3 Review: No Happy Endings Here

    Jon Watts The Fantastic Four

    Jon Watts Explains Pandemic Fatigue Behind Fantastic Four Exit

    Love Island USA Season 7 Review

    Love Island USA Season 7 Review: Summer’s Hottest Guilty Pleasure Returns

    The Carters Hurts to Love You Review

    The Carters: Hurts to Love You Review: Angel Carter’s Courageous Testament to Surviving Family Dysfunction

    Got to Get Out Review

    Got to Get Out Review: The Most Interesting Broken Game on Television

    The Bear Season 4 Review

    The Bear Season 4 Review: A Contemplative, Cathartic Final Course

    Daydreamers Review

    Daydreamers Review: Saigon’s Stylish But Stumbling Vampires

    Most People Die On Sundays Review

    Most People Die On Sundays Review: Resisting the Cathartic Release

    Surviving Ohio State Review

    Surviving Ohio State Review: The Weight of Witness

  • Game Reviews
    Rematch Review

    Rematch Review: Sloclap’s Ambitious Football Experiment Falls Short of Goals

    Chronicles of the Wolf Review

    Chronicles of the Wolf Review: Forging a Path Through the Past

    JDM Japanese Drift Master Review

    JDM: Japanese Drift Master Review – When Mechanics Meet Manga

    Blood Bar Tycoon Review

    Blood Bar Tycoon Review: A Bloody Good Idea, Poorly Executed

    Ghost Frequency Review

    Ghost Frequency Review: All Atmosphere, No Conclusion

    Death Stranding 2 On the Beach Review 1

    Death Stranding 2: On the Beach Review – Kojima’s Outback Odyssey

    RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army Review

    RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army Review: The Detective Who Couldn’t Investigate

    Still Wakes the Deep: Siren’s Rest Review

    Still Wakes the Deep: Siren’s Rest Review – Revisiting a Sunken Legacy

    TRON: Catalyst Review

    TRON: Catalyst Review: More Style Than Substance

  • The Bests
No Result
View All Result
GAZETTELY
No Result
View All Result
Seven Veils Review

Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons Review - This Picross Puzzler Harvests Farm Fresh Charm

Red Right Hand Review: One Final Job for an Ex-Con Protecting His Own

Home Entertainment Movies

Seven Veils Review: Peeling Back Layers of Trauma and Appropriation

Amanda Seyfried Delivers Understated Powerhouse Performance in Atom Egoyan's Flawed, Fascinating Film

Naser Nahandian by Naser Nahandian
1 year ago
in Entertainment, Movies, Reviews
Reading Time: 6 mins read
A A
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on PinterestShare on WhatsAppShare on Telegram

With his signature cerebral and detached filmmaking style, Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan invites audiences into another of his intricately layered worlds with Seven Veils. As with his past melancholy explorations of alienation and trauma, Egoyan once again probes provocative themes like the ambiguity between art and life.

Centered around an opera director named Jeanine tasked with staging a remount of Richard Strauss’s 1905 opera Salome, Seven Veils finds the young woman wrestling with her own troubled past and complicated connections. Jeanine must put her stamp on the familiar production while reconciling painful memories of inappropriate childhood filming by her late father, whom her own mentor repurposed without consent in an earlier staging of Salome.

As Jeanine contends with ruptures in both her creative endeavor and fraying family bonds back home, Egoyan weaves together a hypnotic meditation on consent, exploitation, and the elusive divide between sincerity and deception. With his fractured-glass filmmaking, Egoyan offers no easy answers amidst the veils. Yet for those attuned to his wavelength, Seven Veils promises to be a bracing, if chilling, look behind the curtain.

Reclaiming Salome, Reckoning with Trauma

At the heart of Seven Veils lies Jeanine’s complex mission to remount a production of Richard Strauss’s provocative opera Salome, the tragic tale of a Judean princess who performs the legendary Dance of the Seven Veils to bargain for the decapitated head of John the Baptist. Still reeling from the sudden death of her former mentor and lover Charles, an esteemed director who had staged his own controversial version years earlier, the young and relatively inexperienced Jeanine is tasked with putting her stamp on the familiar work.

Seven Veils Review

Right away, tensions simmer between Jeanine and the opera company’s executives, who seem intent on preserving Charles’s original vision. But the production holds deeply personal meaning for Jeanine that transcends mere creative differences. Through unsettling flashbacks, we learn that Jeanine’s own father had obsessively filmed her as a young girl, including eerie footage of her walking blindfolded through the woods. To Jeanine’s horror, Charles had covertly drawn on those traumatic childhood images for his staging of Salome years before.

Outside the rehearsal halls, Jeanine contends with ruptures on the home front as well. Video calls reveal growing suspicions that her husband Paul is having an affair with her elderly mother’s caretaker. And her mother’s advancing dementia only exacerbates fraught memories of past paternal abuse.

As opening night looms ever closer, Jeanine finds herself at the center of a perfect storm, professionally and personally. Will she reclaim her past and put her own imprint on Salome? Or will long-buried traumas rise up to claim her instead? Egoyan leaves the veils dangling until the final curtain.

Probing the Ethics of Art and Power

True to form, Egoyan utilizes Seven Veils as a vehicle to probe his characteristic preoccupations, from the porous boundaries between art and life to the ethics of artistic license. Most pressing here is Jeanine’s quest to reclaim not just the staging of Salome itself but her own traumatic past that had been appropriated without consent.

In dramatizing Jeanine’s horror upon realizing her childhood footage was incorporated into Charles’s version, Egoyan provokes vital questions around artistic rights and wrongs. How far can or should an artist subjugate real-life suffering for their creative ends? And who gets the final say over such personal material being repurposed on the public stage?

These themes resonate deeper in light of the opera’s plotline as well. Salome’s climactic Dance of the Seven Veils sees the Judean princess use her body and dance as bargaining chips to satisfy her dangerous obsession with John the Baptist. Through this iconic sequence, Egoyan explores the gray areas between exploitation and agency when sex and power entwine.

And by implicitly linking Jeanine’s journey with Salome’s across temporal lines, Seven Veils suggests cycles of trauma reproducing themselves across generations. One senses both women trying to wrest back control over their bodies and stories through the very same male-dominated channels that first objectified them.

Yet as with his chilly directorial style, Egoyan denies easy judgments or catharsis. Seven Veils breathes in ambiguities. Like Jeanine perpetually watching the opera take shape from the rehearsal bridge, suspended between spectator and participant, the audience occupies an uneasy in-between space. In the end, we’re left to judge for ourselves where moral fault lies amidst the jumbled veils of art and life, violation and vengeance.

Dive into the bizarre true crime tale of survival in our Dickweed review. Follow Michael’s harrowing ordeal of abduction and brutality, directed by Jonathan Ignatius Green. Click here to read about this gripping and unsettling story that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Egoyan’s Clinical Precision Anchored by Seyfried

As longtime devotees can attest, Egoyan directs his films with an almost clinical detachment, favoring simmering unease over cathartic outbursts. By avoiding overt displays of emotion, he heightens the discomfort pulsing under Seven Veils’s placid veneer. It’s a rigorous demand on his performers, who must convey churning psychological depths with subtle gestures and glances.

Fortunately, Egoyan has a willing vessel with Amanda Seyfried reprising their collaboration from 2009’s Chloe. Where a less disciplined actress may have tilted into hysterical terrain given the heavy scenarios, Seyfried captivates as Jeanine by playing mostly against outsized reaction. She allows us to read the shadows of trauma behind her inscrutable mask, flickers of anguish revealed as she tries marshaling professional poise. It’s a compelling study in understatement.

Bolstering the film’s credibility within operatic circles, several actual singers from Egoyan’s recent Salome production at the Canadian Opera Company appear as fictionalized versions of themselves. While Ambur Braid as Salome and Michael Kupfer-Radecky as the lecherous John the Baptist neatly satirize their ego-fueled world, Egoyan’s integration of behind-the-scenes documentary footage grounds Seven Veils in a reality beyond the film frame.

In braiding together these layers of invention and authenticity, Egoyan orchestrates a uniquely unsettling vision. Peel back one veil, and you’ll find another.

Sumptuous, Menacing Visuals Mirror the Messy Psyche

From its lush opera house setting to Jeanine’s subtly oppressive childhood home, Seven Veils impresses technically with visuals that externalize psychological unease. Phillip Barker’s sumptuous production design nods to German expressionism in its off-kilter geometries and moody shadows that seem to mock Jeanine from every corner.

Lingering over the decadent textures of the rehearsal halls’ polished woods and velvet curtains, Egoyan’s meticulous eye hints at dark machinations humming beneath such gilded finery. Paul Sarossy’s cinematography utilizes precise shafts of light and color to underscore emotional tones within scenes, bathing Seyfried in sickly greens during particularly tense family video calls. Shrouded in such layered menace, Jeanine appears trapped even in her own potential sanctuary.

Nowhere does this visual symbolism crescendo more evocatively than in the much-touted Dance of the Seven Veils sequence. Backlit by rippling red silhouettes of her own childhood footage, Jeanine watches her traumatic past and Salome’s legend crash into each other under the spotlight. For all its stagy artifice, this arresting tableaux offers perhaps the film’s most piercing psychological nude portrait, with Sarossy’s roving camera subtly echoing the guilty male gazes strip-mining feminine trauma across epochs.

In every fastidiously composed frame, we feel subjective visions and realities losing distinction—the film incarnated.

An Ambitious Mixed Bag from Egoyan

In the end, Seven Veils stands as an ambitious, if imperfect, entry in Atom Egoyan’s intimately cerebral filmography. While his signature detachment aptly conveys simmering traumas beneath the surface, the film’s wandered attention dilutes its provocative voice. Subplots around production romances and backstage antics distract more than deepen.

Nevertheless, Egoyan deserves credit for tackling such a tricky tapestry of themes around appropriation, objectification, and the dangers of unresolved pain recycling through generations. Even when heavy-handed, that he approaches such contemporary societal demons at all signifies his efforts staying responsive to the current moment.

And with Amanda Seyfried turning in a compellingly understated performance as his surrogate director plunged into art-life chaos, Egoyan remains a filmmaker capable of seducing talent, just like Salome herself. For all its flaws, Seven Veils perhaps best works as a conceptual dance piece beholden only to Egoyan’s peculiar vision. The kind of esoteric high-art custom tailored to festivals like Berlin, where free-flowing interpretations move to their own rhythm, the beat of the artist’s inner psyche externalized for good and ill.

So rather than definitive statements, let us conclude with questions. Could a more disciplined editor have brought finesse to such an unwieldy mammoth? Certainly. Would the central mother-daughter trauma have resonated deeper absent the operatic excess? Perhaps. But would it still resemble an Atom Egoyan joint? Undoubtedly not. And the sumptuous shadows say he has no interest in stepping into the light just yet.

The Review

Seven Veils

6 Score

While occasionally sinking under its own weighty ambitions, Seven Veils slakes devoted cineastes with another mesmerizing puzzle box exploring the director’s pet themes. Even when clumsy, Egoyan’s clinical precision and visual artistry entrance. For all its veils, vital questions about appropriation and trauma do pierce through.

PROS

  • Strong central performance by Amanda Seyfried
  • Distinctive and visually stylish direction by Atom Egoyan
  • Explores thought-provoking themes around trauma and appropriation
  • Effective integration of real operatic performances and footage
  • Strong production design and cinematography

CONS

  • Overly complex, distracted narrative with too many subplots
  • Some awkward dialogue and stilted acting from supporting cast
  • Mishandles and underdevelops some key scenes and themes
  • Cold, clinical tone may distance some viewers

Review Breakdown

  • Overall 0
Tags: Amanda SeyfriedAtom EgoyanDouglas SmithDramaEgo Film ArtsElevation PicturesFeaturedMark O'BrienRebecca LiddiardRhombus MediaSeven VeilsThriller
Previous Post

Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons Review – This Picross Puzzler Harvests Farm Fresh Charm

Next Post

Red Right Hand Review: One Final Job for an Ex-Con Protecting His Own

Try AI Movie Recommender

Gazettely AI Movie Recommender

This Week's Top Reads

  • Alma and the Wolf Review

    Alma and the Wolf Review: Ethan Embry Shines in a Flawed Fever Dream

    1 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Boglands Review: Shadows and Whispers in the Irish Mist

    2 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Smoke Review: The Year’s Most Unpredictable and Unsettling Show

    7 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Marshmallow Review: These Woods Hide Unexpected Secrets

    4 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Mix Tape Review: A Story Told on Two Sides of a Cassette

    1 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Outrageous Season 1 Review: Champagne and Cyanide

    1 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Art Detectives Review: The Case of the Brilliant Man and the Underwritten Woman

    195 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0

Must Read Articles

Squid Game Season 3 Review
Entertainment

Squid Game Season 3 Review: No Happy Endings Here

34 minutes ago
Love Island USA Season 7 Review
Entertainment

Love Island USA Season 7 Review: Summer’s Hottest Guilty Pleasure Returns

12 hours ago
The Bear Season 4 Review
Entertainment

The Bear Season 4 Review: A Contemplative, Cathartic Final Course

20 hours ago
Surviving Ohio State Review
Movies

Surviving Ohio State Review: The Weight of Witness

1 day ago
Countdown Season 1 Review
TV Shows

Countdown Season 1 Review: Assembling the Parts of a Soulless Machine

1 day ago
Loading poll ...
Coming Soon
Who is the best director in the horror thriller genre?

Gazettely is your go-to destination for all things gaming, movies, and TV. With fresh reviews, trending articles, and editor picks, we help you stay informed and entertained.

© 2021-2024 All Rights Reserved for Gazettely

What’s Inside

  • Movie & TV Reviews
  • Game Reviews
  • Featured Articles
  • Latest News
  • Editorial Picks

Quick Links

  • Home
  • About US
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise with Us
  • Review Guidelines

Follow Us

Facebook X-twitter Youtube Instagram
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Movies
  • Entertainment News
  • Movie and TV Reviews
  • TV Shows
  • Game News
  • Game Reviews
  • Contact Us

© 2024 All Rights Reserved for Gazettely

Go to mobile version