Perversion the Social Relation

98 Nina Schwartzat her. Francis, we will much later learn, is a tax auditor soon to beginhis investigation of Thomas for tax fraud. 16 Following Christina's danceand then his own private lap dance, Francis goes to the men's room, apparentlysexually aroused, while Eric and Christina look ambiguously ateach other, suggesting the existence of a complex relationship betweenthe two.The film's opening introduces most of its major characters in the contextof sexuality mediated by either money and "art"—the ballet as astrategy for picking up men—or money and artifice—as in the repetitivestaginess of the Exotica dancers' performances. In fact, it would be difficultto count the numbers of times money is passed from one character toanother. Egoyan thus suggests the creepiest dimensions to these characters,who seem not just deceptive but sexually predatory (Thomas at theballet; the men at the dance club) or sexually manipulative (the dancersand pregnant club owner, Zoë [Arsinee Khanjian, Egoyan's wife]), exploitingthe spectators' frustrations for financialgain or some other kindof power. Such implications are intensified in a particularly disturbingway when we later see Francis dropping off a thirteen- or fourteen-yearoldgirl, Tracey (Sarah Polley), in front of a neon-lit storefront. Whenhe then pays Tracey, we can't help but suspect that her services havebeen sexual, despite the fact that the scene includes banal dialogue innormative tones: "Are you free next Thursday?" "I think so."The film, that is, chooses to introduce us to a world that seems notjust tawdry but perhaps criminally exploitative with its suggestions ofchild porn (on one occasion, Eric introduces Christina as "a sassy bitof jailbait") and childhood sexual abuse (Francis and Tracey). What wewill ultimately learn, however, is that these apparently consciencelesspeople engaged in various exploitations of others' weaknesses are themselvesall mostly very nice, not particularly exploitative people workingin not particularly successful ways to cope with loss. Some of these lossesare conventional and not especially dramatic, and some are profoundlytraumatic; some are clearly articulated in the film, and others are onlyhinted at.One question the film raises, then, is why it should initially chooseto display its figures in the most aggressively unflattering and disturbingpossible light, only to frustrate the expectations that such a portrayalraises. Egoyan, that is, chooses to invert the strategy of David Lynch in