SOURCE: “This Director's Got a Brand Noir Bag,” in Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1995, pp. 21–23.

In the following review, McKenna explores the differences between Exotica and Egoyan's earlier films.

“People often describe my work as cold and clinical, but I just can't see it that way—to me it's about nothing but emotion,” says Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan.

“True, the people in my films often try to deny their emotions and usually have a hard time understanding what they're feeling. Nonetheless, the emotions are always bubbling away in there at an almost operatic level.”

The reason critics often describe Egoyan's work as cold could have something to do with the tendency in his films for the “operatic” emotions to implode rather than explode—and the fact that the media are usually positioned as central characters in his narratives.

From his 1984 feature debut, Next of Kin, to his recently released...