An uptight insurance man and his film-censor wife become a kinky couple's landlords.
Direction
Egoyan's ice-cold formalism masks genuine emotional devastation.
Writing
Dialogue that sounds like therapy notes from a haunted man.
Acting
Koteas smolders with repressed need; Khanjian is magnificently unhinged.
Director
Atom Egoyan
Elias Koteas
Noah
Arsinée Khanjian
Hera
Maury Chaykin
Bubba
Gabrielle Rose
Mimi
Jennifer Dale
Arianne
David Hemblen
Bert, the head censor
Jacqueline Samuda
Louise, the maid
Gerard Parkes
Tim
Patricia Collins
Lorraine
Don McKellar
Tyler, the young censor
John Gilbert
The doctor
Stephen Ouimette
Larry, the butterfly collector
Raoul Max Trujillo
Matthew, his lover
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Egoyan made this during the Canadian tax-shelter era, part of a wave of intellectually provocative Toronto films that treated sexuality with clinical detachment.
The motel was a real functioning location; Egoyan reportedly kept the rooms disturbingly accurate to actual insurance displacement housing.
CA
