Thomas (Don McKellar) smuggles rare bird eggs for his pet store and he starts going to the ballet after given a ticket. Exotica is a strip club in Toronto with a lush tropical theme. Christina (Mia Kirshner) is a stripper there, Eric (Elias Koteas) is the DJ, and a pregnant Zoe (Arsinée Khanjian) is the owner. Francis (Bruce Greenwood) is a customer and a tax auditor. Eric and Christina used to be sweethearts. Harold (Victor Garber) is Francis' friend and Tracey (Sarah Polley) is his daughter. The stories interconnect as the movie weave them back and forth in time.

Writer/director Atom Egoyan has definitely made something unique. The strip club is oddly unlike any others. It sets the tone for the movie. Nothing is so simple. The movie holds its secrets as it peels the story of these characters slowly. The characters are fascinating. Each one is emotionally detached and damaged. The movie is hypnotic as the audience work out the connections between the stories. It's a real slow strip tease.

The 'Exotica' is a nightclub on the outskirts of Toronto, where Eric (Elias Koteas),DJ and MC, watches nightly as his ex-girlfriend Christina (Mia Kirshner) performs.

Sarah Polley appears in a supporting role, Mia Kirshner takes center stage, and Elias Koteas gives the best performance of his career. Koteas is a great actor, often overlooked or forgotten, or even unknown... and this is a shame. He is incredible, and should be thought of as more than just Casey Jones from the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" franchise.

Roger Ebert gives this four stars and even included it as one his "great movies". He is spot on (as usual). This is a dynamite thriller, with a bit of mystery and suspense along the way. If Atom Egoyan had only made this one movie, he still would have had a full career.

One's patience will be rewarded if you make it to the end of the picture. I guess that's my way of saying that it won't appeal to everyone, especially if you quit half way in like another reviewer mentioned, stating that it didn't make any sense. I'd have to agree with that observation, at the half way point it doesn't make any sense. But disparate threads eventually come together, even if some of the elements introduced have no bearing on the story. The film has a creepy vibe going for it throughout and things are definitely not what they seem at first. As an example, I thought Francis Brown's (Bruce Greenwood) relationship with baby sitter Tracey (Sarah Polley) was headed into unspeakable territory, and then we come to find out that she's his niece. It's those kinds of twists and turns that keep one off balance, just like Eric's (Elias Koteas) set up to get Francis thrown out of the Club Exotica. You never really know which way the story is heading until the very last scene, and the payoff is distressingly sad and depressing for the film's principal character, who's unable to reconcile his conflicted emotions over the loss of a daughter and wife in unrelated circumstances. It's safe for me to say I haven't run across another picture like this, at least not that I can recall. Even the title "Exotica" has the effect of misdirecting one's expectations after the fact, as the strip club atmosphere at the center of the story only provides the venue for the story to unfold in a most unexpected way.