Latest news with #SevenVeils
Chicago Tribune
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
‘Seven Veils' review: The operatics are everywhere in this backstage melodrama
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
Washington Post
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Repressed memories and grand opera are dance partners in ‘Seven Veils'
In 'Seven Veils,' Amanda Seyfried puts her wide, unblinking eyes to good use as a woman staring at the present and unable to see anything but the past. The actress plays Jeanine, a theater director mounting a production of the Richard Strauss opera 'Salome' that increasingly reflects her childhood trauma, to the confusion of Jeanine's cast, crew, family and friends. The movie's tension is built on an uncertainty: Is this a portrait of an artist having a nervous breakdown or the story of a woman using art to confront and exorcise her demons?
CBC
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Amanda Seyfried had something to prove after Mean Girls
Amanda Seyfried was 17 when she landed her breakthrough role as Karen Smith in the movie Mean Girls. Today, she looks back on her time shooting the film as a "complete and utter frenzy of fun," but in an interview with Q 's Tom Power, she says there was one thing she was concerned about after Mean Girls became a pop culture phenomenon. "I didn't want to get pigeonholed as the ditzy blonde because as fun as it was to play Karen Smith, not everybody is going to write such a perfect character," Seyfried says. WATCH | Amanda Seyfried's full interview with Tom Power: After Mean Girls, Seyfried took on supporting roles in Veronica Mars and Big Love, which were great characters, but not necessarily big departures from what she'd done before. "Both [characters were] totally, totally different than Karen, but still blonde ingénues," Seyfried explains. "I knew that the ingénue thing was totally fine, but I also knew that I needed to prove something as soon as humanly possible. Because people do not offer you those roles, you have to search for them. Seyfried says her agent (the same one who got her Mean Girls) "understood the task at hand" and immediately started searching for riskier, more challenging roles. I needed to prove something as soon as humanly possible. - Amanda Seyfried The actor counts the beloved cult classic Jennifer's Body among her big wins from that time, adding that she had to do a lot of auditions before landing the part. But her first "true departure" was in Atom Egoyan's 2009 erotic thriller Chloe, in which she plays a mysterious sex worker who's hired by a gynecologist (Julianne Moore) to seduce her husband (Liam Neeson), whom she suspects of infidelity. WATCH | Official trailer for Seven Veils: "I was going to show the industry … that I was serious," Seyfried says. "And in order to show seriousness, you had to do things that felt risky. And sometimes things that felt 'risky' — these are all in quotes — was doing something sexual…. That was just pushing all the boundaries for someone my age. And I was fully into it." Now, Seyfried has reunited with Egoyan on the Canadian director's new film, Seven Veils. It follows a theatre director named Jeanine (Seyfried) who re-enters the opera world to stage her former mentor's most famous work. "The cool thing is, I don't believe that I have departure roles anymore," Seyfried says. "I think that whatever I do is accepted as just another job, and that is a win. That's a true success."
New York Times
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Seven Veils' Review: Private Anguish in Public View
Only the Canadian writer-director Atom Egoyan ('Exotica,' 'The Sweet Hereafter') could have made the movie 'Seven Veils.' His signature obsessions — the ripple effects of trauma, the use of video as evidence, private anguish played out in public view — pervade every frame. The film centers on a theater director, Jeanine (Amanda Seyfried), who is remounting a production of Strauss's opera 'Salomé' that she had worked on as a student with a mentor, Charles, who is never seen. The new assignment comes from Charles's widow, Beatrice (Lanette Ware), who manages the opera company and surely knows that Jeanine and Charles were having an affair back then. What's more, during the old production, Charles had exploited Jeanine's experience of childhood abuse, vampirically drawing out her memories of being terrorized by her father and integrating those details into 'Salomé.' The restaging requires Jeanine to faithfully replicate a troubling production while contradictorily making it her own, to expel her demons — all without disclosing her personal stake to the cast. She also has to manage present-day problems, notably a baritone (Michael Kupfer-Radecky) who is a liability around women. There's more than a hint of self-reflexivity to 'Seven Veils,' which incorporates Egoyan's own remounting of 'Salomé' for the Canadian Opera Company from 2023. That production's singers play fictionalized versions of themselves. In short, 'Seven Veils' offers plenty to think about. But fans who mourn that Egoyan's dramatic instincts have slipped in recent years won't quite be getting a return to form. Seyfried in particular seems out of place, and although the apparent miscasting might be intentional (Jeanine, giving an interview to a podcaster, pointedly explains that she is older than she looks), certain plot points and motifs, such as home movies featuring a blindfold and tangerines, approach self-parody. Seven VeilsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Amanda Seyfried Hints ‘Jennifer's Body 2' Is in the Works: ‘I Think We're Making Another One'
Amanda Seyfried is on board for any 'Jennifer's Body' sequel, which could come sooner than later. The actress, though not confirming the film, told Bloody Disgusting that a 'Jennifer's Body 2' could be in the works soon. 'I think we're making another one,' Seyfried said while on the red carpet for 'Seven Veils.' 'I didn't confirm it! I said, 'I think.'' IndieWire has reached out to representatives for Seyfried, screenwriter Diablo Cody, and director Karyn Kusama for further comment. More from IndieWire New Directors/New Films 2025 to Spotlight 'Familiar Touch' and 'Lurker' - See the Full Lineup The 17 Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in March, from 'Fair Play' to 'Emily the Criminal' 'Jennifer's Body' was released in 2009. While the feature barely broke even at the box office, the now-iconic film is considered to be a feminist horror classic. Seyfried stars as Needy, whose best friend Jennifer (Megan Fox) is the high school queen bee. However, after Jennifer is sacrificed by the lead singer (Adam Brody) of a band touring through town, she is left as a half-girl, half-demon who feasts on unsuspecting boys to survive. Academy Award-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody told Bloody Disgusting in 2024 that she is 'not done' with the world of 'Jennifer's Body' during its 15-year anniversary. 'I want to do a sequel. I am not done with 'Jennifer's Body,'' Cody said. 'I need to partner with people who believe it in [sic] as much as I do and that hasn't really happened yet. I need someone to believe in it who has a billion dollars.' In 2024 while talking about her 'Lisa Frankenstein' script, Cody told IndieWire about renewed interest in a potential 'Jennifer Body's' sequel. 'I had no idea people would get so excited about that,' Cody said. 'I was delighted to see the response, I'm going to clip those articles and show them to all the people who are like, 'We don't think this is such a good idea.' Bring it into the people that I need to green light it.' She told IndieWire that the renewed chatter around a potential sequel really excited her. 'It's the best thing that's ever happened to me in my career, it's like total validation,' she said of the continued fandom around the film. 'It came late, I'm OK with that, I've made my peace with that. I went through a lot when that movie came out, just personal attacks. It was about more than just the movie. … I always believed in it, but I did lose my confidence. If people hadn't rediscovered 'Jennifer's Body,' I would not have written 'Lisa Frankenstein.' With that whole area, that genre, I kind of felt unwelcome in it, because I had flopped so hard on my last attempt.' Meanwhile, Seyfried next stars in Mona Fastvold's upcoming 'Ann Lee' musical, which centers on the founder of the Shaker Movement in the late 1770s. The musical biopic is co-written by Fastvold and her 'The Brutalist' collaborator and real-life partner Brady Corbet. Seyfried told Vanity Fair that shooting Fastvold and Corbet's secret indie film after wrapping the upcoming Peacock limited series 'Long Bright River,' was tough. 'I went to hell and back,' Seyfried said of the demanding back-to-back projects. 'Oh, my God. What the fuck? Even my assistant's like, 'You need to take a break,'' Seyfried said. 'We could only do ['Ann Lee'] in the summer. … We moved everybody to Budapest, including my dog. Then we did a crazy thing. We did a crazy thing.' She added of the musical, 'I don't know how it's going to turn out.' Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie The 55 Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now
