Seven Veils Parent Guide

Jeanine (Amanda Seyfried) is a busy, busy woman. She’s mounting a production of the opera Salome at the request of her late teacher, Chris, while trying to balance her struggling marriage and deteriorating mother. The play also meant a great deal to Jeanine’s father, with whom she has an even stranger relationship. Putting the production together is pushing Jeanine back into her memories of her difficult childhood, and her turbulent relationship with Chris. The pressure is mounting, but the show will go on – Jeanine won’t have it any other way.

There’s a lot to like about Seven Veils. The editing maintains a clear narrative line despite bouncing between a few different stories, and the cast is superb. I was surprised by Ambur Braid, playing the titular lead in the opera, before I did my diligence and learned that she is a professional opera singer who’s played this role on stage – that’s about as prepared as an actor can get, and her performance is excellent. Since the opera is so central to the movie, Braid’s performance is definitely a key element and she’s critical to the success of the film.

That said, this is a movie about, in nearly equal measure, sexual violence and opera. Not the most approachable topics in the world, but handled here with surprising grace. There’s no explicit sexual content on screen, although in the course of the play the actors stage a number of sexual liaisons, and there are no detailed descriptions of the many instances of sexual assault references throughout the film. If you can get through that, there’s hardly any harsh language of any sort, and only brief social drinking.

While Seven Veils isn’t going to be make the family movie night circuit any time soon, it’s a compelling adult drama that confronts some big issues in a surprisingly dexterous way, and it’s hard not to be impressed with Egoyan’s ability to corral a difficult narrative into a movie that runs under two hours. This isn’t a film that panders to you – if you’re not interested in opera, if you’d rather not spend your recreational hours dealing with issues around sexual violence, if you just don’t like dramas - don’t bother. For adult fans of challenging drama, Seven Veils offers a thought-provoking, if stressful, experience. Or, if nothing else, a way to listen to opera in less than about four hours.