Exotica

Exotica (1994) is a Canadian psychological drama you can watch online on iFILM, written and directed by Atom Egoyan. Every evening, Francis (Bruce Greenwood), a quietly broken tax auditor, takes his usual table at a Toronto strip club and pays for the same dancer — Christina (Mia Kirshner) — to sit with him in a schoolgirl uniform.

It is not what it looks like. Egoyan pieces the story together in fragments, circling around a child's unsolved murder, a grieving father's ritual, and the web of history connecting Francis, Christina, the jealous MC Eric (Elias Koteas), and a teenage babysitter (Sarah Polley) who watches over an apartment that no longer holds anyone alive. Only in the final twenty minutes does the full geometry of grief snap into place.

Exotica took the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes in 1994. Egoyan builds dread out of repetition and withheld information — there is not a single act of violence on screen, yet the film is tense from the first scene. Watch Exotica (1994) online on iFILM.