Chloé

This film is about a doctor who suspects her husband to be cheating. She hires a prostitute to test her suspicion, which spirals out of control beyond anyone's imagination.

If there is a sub-genre called sexual thriller, "Chloe" would be the prototype. The plot works very well, it's very engaging. The sexual mystery and tension are captivating, and the copious nudity does not even come across as over the top or contrived. Just as you thought you guessed the whole plot, it twists in the most dramatic way. There is so much suspense, excitement and mystery to the story. "Chloe" is a very good film with a wow factor, that keeps me glued to the screen.

Thinking about film and how it works is made easier when you have two films that in some way are similar.

Here we had an original French film that was really quite effective. It powerfully gave us the inner dance of two conflicting souls of the performance of Woman. It was delicate, took fewer risks than we would allow, but impressed by its structure and intent.

Now it is transferred to the English language, a transition that usually and unnecessarily dulls the edges. The filmmaker is Atom Egoyan, who has made at least one essential film. I should say "director" rather than filmmaker because this has none of his precise confusion, none of his danger. He clearly is a director for hire, with someone else having commissioned a compete rewrite.

We still have two women and a husband. We still have fragments of the situation. But the whole thing is restructured. We no longer have an inner exploration, puzzlement, self- negotiation. We no longer explore humanness. Now it is all external. These really are two competing women in a traditional thriller model. Instead of allowing the structural drift into internal issues, we now have a son who plays an essential role, establishing an external observer.

This is a mess. The writer previously did well in being and writing a tortured woman. For some reason, the producers thought that was what "Nathalie" needed. Gosh, what a bad calculation! And that's with Julianne Moore, who could have made the original into life- altering art.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Chloe (2009)

*** (out of 4)

A successful gynecologist (Julianne Moore) begins to think that her husband (Liam Neeson) is having an affair with a much younger woman so she hires a prostitute (Amanda Seyfried) to try and seduce him. The prostitute begins a relationship with the husband so that she can give all the details to the wife who in return begins to have strange feelings towards the woman she hired as well as her husband. This isn't the first erotic movie from Egoyan who splashed on the scene years earlier with EXOTICA, another rather bizarre sex story. This film here isn't all about erotic feelings, although there's certainly a lot of sex talk. I think the most fascinating aspect of the film is Moore's character who is much older in years but seems to be lacking just about everything else. When the relationship starts out we never see the husband and hooker together. The story draws its power from the relationship that blooms between the wife and the hooker. This is so interesting because we're never really given the motives of the wife outside she wants to know if the husband is a cheater. She finds this out rather early yet she keeps sending the prostitute out to get more info. The press for the film milked the fact that Moore and Seyfried ended up in bed with a rather passionate sex scene. This sequence contains two obviously beautiful women yet the scene isn't about the sex but the drama of what their characters are feeling. I think the film never makes too much sense in what it's trying to do but perhaps that was the point. The point to keep us off guard and not sure where the thing is going to go. For the most part I enjoyed the seduction and bizarre relationship, although I must admit that I thought the final fifteen-minutes just went way too far. I'm really not sure if a film and story like this needed an ending or if any ending could have worked but the one they selected just came off way too weak. The best thing about the movie are the performances by the three leads. I've always been hit and miss on Moore as in one film I'll find her to be excellent but then the next I'd see her as lazy. There's no question this here ranks as one of her best performances because of the wide range of emotions she goes through. Her character goes through all sorts of ups and downs and I thought the actress handled them beautifully. I really enjoyed seeing how she handled this character who is pretty much going through a mid-life crisis while figuring out new things about her own sexuality. Neeson is also excellent in his role, although he's not got as flashy a role. Seyfried turns in a terrific performance as well as you have no problem believing her in the role and the level of sexual maturity she provides is certainly a highlight. I thought she and Moore did a terrific job together and you can feel everything their characters are going through. The "twist" in the story is one I caught fairly early on in the picture so if you don't pick up on this I'd say you'd enjoy the film even more. Even though CHLOE is a complete success I do think the performances make it worth sitting through.

When David (Liam Neeson) misses his flight home from New York and, as a result, the surprise party his wife Catherine (Julianne Moore) has planned for him, Catherine is forced to swallow her disappointment and any suspicions and return to the waiting guests. Reading a text message sent to David's phone the following morning from one of his female students, Catherine's fear grows. More suspicious than ever that David is having an affair, Catherine seeks out Chloe (Amanda Seyfried), an escort, hiring her to test David's fidelity.

Chloe is a very solid thriller. Extremely engaging and incredibly entertaining, this story is ultimately about human nature and instincts. The film really grabs your attention and visually, it's quite a feat. The minimalistic sets and the way it was shot give this film a really modern and slick look. I feel like I should warn that there's quite a bit of nudity and somewhat graphic scenes but nothing outrageous or out of place.

Moore was absolutely terrific, she has proved her value already but here she delivers possibly one of the best performances of her career. Seyfried was quite a surprise. Her performance was subtle but very efficient and she seems a very promising young actress. Liam Neeson was not nearly as good as he usually is but it's understandable considering his wife died during the shooting of the film.

As I said, Chloe is a very solid and well done film. Unfortunately it has one major flaw, the predictably of the plot. I saw the twist coming from a mile way and I think any avid movie-goer will too. Still, it was a great watch, very entertaining and extremely well acted. Worth seeing.

7/10

This film reminded me of the 90's wave of erotic thrillers. It's got all the elements, including a healthy dose of softcore sex scenes which surprised me because Amanda Seyfried has such an endearing, innocent look about her. But she's such a good actress though that this doesn't prevent her from convincingly playing the role of seductive call girl Chloe. Julianne Moore plays Catherine, a gynecologist who suspects her flirtatious husband (Liam Neeson) is having an affair with one of his students. While at work Catherine observes Chloe entering and exiting hotels with several men so she can make a pretty good guess at Chloe's profession. Catherine decides to use Chloe as bait to see if her husband would submit to the temptation of an affair with Chloe.

And even though that is the basic storyline, there is so much more that is left unsaid; things Catherine thinks she knows but doesn't know about her husband, things Chloe knows about Catherine that Catherine herself doesn't even know; and in the middle of it all, the viewer who finds out we didn't know much at all about it all. The audience is pretty much kept in the dark as to what is really going on with Chloe until one small scene that immediately switches the direction of the movie. It's not one of those hokey melodramatic twists, but will definitely have you playing back the entire movie in your mind because it sheds everything in a new light. Chloe brags at the beginning of the film, in a voice-over narration, that she has the gift of intuiting what people want and need without it being said. She can be all things to all people. And unfortunately for Julianne Moore's character, Chloe is exactly right....just not in the way that you might initially think she is.

What makes this movie good is that it has layers. Just as in real life, people are inevitably much different than what they appear to be on the surface. In a lesser film, the characters and plot would be one-dimensional and by far less interesting.