‘Seven Veils' review: The operatics are everywhere in this backstage melodrama

Chicago Tribune

07-03-2025

Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan scored a fair-sized sensation with his 1996 Canadian Opera Company production of the Richard Strauss opera 'Salome' — the one about the stepdaughter of the depraved King Herod, her Dance of the Seven Veils, Salome's lust for John the Baptist and the circumstances forcing Salome to settle for a kiss on the lips of her beloved's beheaded head instead.
Psychosexually forward, Egoyan's staging went on to Houston Grand Opera and Vancouver Opera, which co-produced the 'Salome' production with the Canadian company. Egoyan then revisited 'Salome' in 2023. But he had more thoughts about the material he wanted to realize for a new medium. Re-using the physical production, dominated by Derek McLane's strikingly angular scenic design, Egoyan had an idea for a movie about a director, new to opera, restaging her late mentor and semi-secret lover's triumph while a big pot of backstage operatics simmers away.
'Seven Veils,' starring Amanda Seyfried, is the result. The themes are deadly serious: In the fictional narrative cooked up by Egoyan, staging this 'Salome' finds Seyfried's fraught character confronting the memory of her abuser-father and her childhood sexual trauma while exploring how life can illuminate and amplify art.
At the same time, Egoyan's impulses lean toward a kind of wry melodrama, and a slew of narrative developments and hidden agendas. From what we see of the Egoyan stage production of 'Salome' in 'Seven Veils,' it looks like a winner; the movie, unfortunately, is a mixed bag, though still fairly absorbing.
'Small but meaningful': That's how Jeanine, Seyfried's character, describes the tweaks she has in mind for the 'Salome' restaging she has been hired to direct. Her late mentor, who encouraged Jeanine's ideas while exploiting her sexually, represents a legendary figure, especially to his widow (Lanette Ware), now the opera company's general manager. She's likely aware of the affair her husband had with Jeanine.
Meantime, there are present-day affairs underway in this busy operatic troupe, and also a considerable number of underminers. At one point, Jeanine sits for an interview with a podcaster and it takes roughly eight seconds of screen time for him to establish his bona fides as a world-class weasel. Jeanine also is dealing with an uncertain marriage (they're in a tentative open-it-up phase) and a mother living with Alzheimer's, whose caregiver is involved with Jeanine's semi-quasi-separated husband.
It's a lot. Seyfried, who has worked with writer-director Egoyan before on the super-ripe erotic drama 'Chloe' (2009), finesses some zig-zaggy tonal swerves confidently and well. The writing, however, wobbles. And in that regard the screenplay's inventions are wholly unlike Egoyan's own staging of 'Salome,' as judged by what we see of it in the cinematic riff 'Seven Veils.'
Running time: 1:47