The most dream-like of Egoyan’s films is also his most elaborate questioning of the difference between what people do and who they are. Noah Render (Elias Koteas) is an insurance adjuster who rushes to people’s aid when their houses burn down, and can’t help becoming transgressively involved with them. His fragile home life with his film censor wife (Arsinee Khanjian) is disturbed by the arrival of Bubba and Mimi, a wealthy couple who spend their time orchestrating elaborate erotic charades. A complex jigsaw structure teases out the ambiguities of a fiction in which even the illusions aren’t quite what they appear to be.

Canada, 1991.
100 mins.