Vague Visages’ Seven Veils review contains minor spoilers. Atom Egoyan’s 2023 movie features Amanda Seyfried as Jeanine, Rebecca Liddiard as Clea and Douglas Smith as Luke. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

Amanda Seyfried carries Seven Veils, a meta-tale about a stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play Salome. The American actress, best known for headlining David Fincher’s Mank (2020) and the 2022 Hulu miniseries The Dropout, stars as Jeanine — a first-time theatre director tasked with developing a modern spin on her late mentor’s work. Seyfried handles the psychosexual themes with great care, which delicately informs the audience about her character’s repressed trauma associated with two different men. Filmmaker Atom Egoyan builds upon Salome’s bloody premise — a young and obsessed woman demands the head of John the Baptist — for a sexualized story about loving too much and living loudly in confined spaces.

Seven Veils wears its heart on its sleeve like a John Cassavetes drama, and teases the audience like an M. Night Shyamalan thriller. In fact, Egoyan made his film while staging an actual production of Salome. All of Seven Veils’ main players celebrate their collaborative process, and they’re naturally passionate when defending their artistic decisions. During the opening sequence, Seyfried’s Jeanine narrates about making her adaptation “personal” — a theme that carries through from act to act as the protagonist calls out colleagues (and a passive-aggressive podcaster) for questioning her creative motivations. The central conflict relates to Jeanine’s alleged affair with her married mentor, along with the fact that she remembers starring in her father’s art house-style home videos as kid. Seyfried’s character also refuses to use an intimacy coordinator. So, just as the play character Salome dances with ecstasy after receiving the head of her beloved John the Baptist, Seven Veils’ protagonist/antihero similarly embraces feelings of joy and confusion while while crafting a public statement about the human condition.

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Since Seven Veils’ Jeanine holds her cards tight and could possibly be an unreliable narrator, the audience theoretically needs a secondary female figure to identify with. Egoyan doubles-down on his primary themes through a prop designer named Clea, portrayed by the wonderful and relatively unknown Rebecca Liddiard (Fargo, Frankie Drake Mysteries). The queer character plays nice while chatting with female colleagues about the play’s controversial male lead, Johann (Michael Kupfer-Radecky), who is the subject of various rumors about past sexual misconduct; however, Clea vows to expose the man after a handsy backstage encounter, essentially functioning as the film’s moral compass — a conflicted character with an opportunity to carry out a revenge plan, all the while earning audience sympathy as a victim who just wants to be heard and respected. Liddiard receives significant screen time in Seven Veils — a nice surprise — and provides much more narrative depth than most of the supporting players, many of whom feel like thinly-written archetypes. Seven Veils keeps Seyfried and her co-star isolated in a circle of suspense, making it difficult to interpret their characters’ motivations and relationships with male colleagues.

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Egoyan’s direction is utterly fascinating, along with Paul Sarossy’s cinematography, as the camera explores small spaces from different angles, with Seyfried becoming even more animated as Jeanine thinks deeper about the past. At one point, the character’s body contorts in various directions, seemingly a spontaneous and inadvertent interpretation of Salome’s “Dance of the Seven Veils.” Of course, Seyfried’s big eyes always play in a crucial role in her films, especially when misunderstood characters like Jeanine feel threatened. In Seven Veils, the actress channels Salome’s fiery spirit through physical mannerisms while keeping the audience on their toes with her dialogue delivery and subtle suggestions about her character’s personality.

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Egoyan and editor David Wharnsby maintain a prickly tone in Seven Veils, bouncing back and forth between Jeanine’s perspective and those of her scheming colleagues. And though it’s often difficult to read the protagonist, she does indeed state her intentions through narration and art-themed conversations. But what does Jeanine really want to say? Or rather, what is Egoyan saying about the creative process?

As a long-time fan of the painter Caravaggio, Seven Veil’s psychosexual elements remind me of the Italian artist’s most provocative work. In 1609, he produced an apologetic piece called Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (which features his severed head on a platter), and then quickly created a similar painting called David with the Head of Goliath — a gift for Cardinal Scipione Borghese that would allow Caravaggio to resume a normal life in Italy after being accused of murder. Sadly, the pardon attempt didn’t work, and the artist mysteriously disappeared the same year. With Seven Veils, Egoyan doesn’t necessarily make any obvious statements about himself as a filmmaker, as — again — most of the male characters don’t have much to say. But if one listens closely to Jeanine and Clea, maybe there’s something to be learned about the delicate dance of professionalism and compassionate communication while working quickly, intimately and intensely with a small group of people.

Seven Veils released theatrically on March 7, 2025 via XYZ Films.

Q.V. Hough (@QVHough) is Vague Visages’ founding editor. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film essays at Vague Visages.

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