In the past we've talked about his explorations of voyeurism and exhibitionism, memory and repression, desire and fear. Their histories and their goals divide them, but chance brings them together in a dance of self-delusion and attempted redemption. While the themes might be Egoyan's own, the basis for this script is a novel by William Trevor. I was fascinated by the characters, both suspended in a kind of period piece. They shock each other into recognition of who they are and what their current situations are.
Serial killing is by now almost mundane in popular culture.
It's almost become a job. The representation of serial killing in contemporary film culture makes it an occupation, like lawyering, which I explored in The Sweet Hereafter . That's the only way I can understand the preponderance of this particular abnormality. We're fascinated by it because it represents the most extreme moral transgression, but it's done repeatedly. The seriality of the action becomes interesting to us structurally, because it alludes to fate and inevitability and our ability to stop it.