Exotica (film) - Synopsis

Synopsis

Note: The story of Exotica is not told in chronological order and important information is often revealed only late in the film. The following synopsis does not reflect the viewer's actual experience of the events as they unfold.

Exotica presents a disparate group of characters whose lives are interconnected through the Exotica nightclub. Christina (Mia Kirshner) is an exotic dancer at Exotica, owned by Zoe (Arsinée Khanjian). Eric (Elias Koteas) is the club's DJ and Christina's former boyfriend, and is involved in a complex relationship with Zoe. Francis (Bruce Greenwood) is a customer who comes in nightly and always has Christina -- dressed in a schoolgirl uniform -- give him a private dance (to Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows"), which seems to inspire Eric's jealousy.

Francis hires a teenaged girl named Tracey Brown (Sarah Polley) to babysit each night while he attends the nightclub. But Francis has no child and the girl waits in an empty house each night until her employer returns.

In his professional life, Francis is a tax auditor for Revenue Canada, and Thomas (Don McKellar) is a latent-gay pet store owner whose books of account Francis is auditing pursuant to a suspicion of Thomas running an illegal import business with revenues of $200,000 per year.

Francis is eventually banned from the club when Eric manipulates him into touching Christina during one of her dances (which is against the rules of the club). Around the same time, Francis discovers illegal activities in Thomas' financial records, and forces Thomas to get involved in his conflict with Eric -- and we eventually learn that Francis' obsession with Christina has much more complex roots than it first appears. The film's final scene, set many years before the others, shows that the death of Francis' daughter and the discovery of her body is central to the lives of the main characters.