Seven Veils

Directed by Atom Egoyan, Seven Veils follows Amanda Seyfried’s Jeanine as she attempts to mount an ambitious adaptation of Richard Strauss’ Salome – with complications ensuing as Jeanine finds herself forced to confront a variety of personal issues (including those from her traumatic past). Filmmaker Egoyan, armed with his own screenplay, delivers a sluggish and predominantly uninvolving misfire that contains few (if any) attributes designed to capture and sustain the viewer’s ongoing interest, as the picture, which runs a palpably overlong 107 minutes, has been suffused with a whole host of unappealing, underwhelming attributes that cumulatively perpetuate the far-from-enthralling atmosphere. And while Seyfried admittedly does offer up a committed and commanding performance, Seven Veils‘ recurring emphasis on the characters’ hopelessly tiresome backstage exploits (ie the movie certainly demands a high tolerance for opera), coupled with Egoyan’s overly arty approach to the material, ensures that the whole thing fizzles out long before arriving at its seriously anticlimactic finish – with the final result an admittedly ambitious yet distressingly interminable endeavor that strikes all the wrong notes virtually from the get-go.

* out of ****