I think Atom Egoyan is a very talented director and even his bad stuff has beautiful and interesting elements in it. His newest film, Chloe is a very well made, interesting psycho-sexual drama that has some lovely moments, is aesthetically wonderful, but comes apart in the end, rendering the whole production only OK in the end.
Catherine and David (Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson) are a middle-aged married couple in Toronto who have a high-school-aged son. They are deeply in love, but after David comes home late one night from a meeting, Catherine starts to suspect that he is cheating on her. She hires a young prostitute, Chloe (Amanda Seyfried), to flirt with him and see if she can draw him into an affair. Things get out of hand, when David apparently does fall for Chloe's bait and she reports the news back to Catherine.
As with many of Egoyan's films, including his masterpiece The Sweet Hereafter, the filmmaker is able to richly fill a screen with sumptuous details. Interiors look clear and gorgeous, comfortable and totally complete. Cinematographer Paul Sarossy does a wonderful job of making very common set-ups look more than average, more than just plain reality. These locations set up a beautiful juxtaposition between the places and the frequently psychological difficulties his characters find themselves and between them and us. We look at the settings and think they're easy and relaxing; they can't enjoy these places because they're too wrapped up in their own dramas. Such tension is central, I think, to Egoyan's works.
The acting throughout is very good - and I am not normally a big fan of Julianne Moore. Neeson is always great - but he's very much a supporting character here. Amanda Seyfried proves herself once again to be the top of her class of young starlets (above Anne Hathaway, Kristen Stewart, Carrie Mulligan and Anna Kendrick, all of whom I just can't stand for their overacting or dullness). She does amazing work in the HBO show Big Love and it continues here. She is convincing as a clever working girl who knows how to look out for herself, but also a fragile young woman who has a ton of mental baggage. She also seems very comfortable to be very naked (which was totally fine with me!). Moore works well with Seyfried and is also good here as a wife who feels scored, trying anything she can think of to dig herself out of a tough family situation.
The writing is what really hurts this film. It begins very nicely in a very Noel Coward/Billy Wilder sort of way, but ultimately devolves into a very trite and dull Hollywoodish third act where characters start to freak out for no reason and the regulated calmness of the beginning is lost. The ending is simply a joke, along the lines of a teen thriller.
Overall this is a very pretty movie that doesn't end as well as it begins. It's good, but not fabulous.
Stars: 2 of 4
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