Chloe
by Atom Egoyan
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DVD details
Actor: Amanda Seyfried, Julianne Moore, Liam NeesonDirector: Atom Egoyan
Brand: SON
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 96 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2010-07-13
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
DVD Reviews of Chloe
DVD Review: Fantasy and midlife crisis - not just a man's perogative
Summary: 4 Stars
Canadian director Atom Egoyan's newest feature is the first that he didn't also write, and at first glance looks to be far and away his most conventional and accessible film. The fact that it's produced by Ivan Reitman, the man behind such 80s and 90s blockbusters as the GHOSTBUSTERS films and TWINS certainly wouldn't seem to contradict that notion, but appearances can be deceiving; though the film is certainly on the surface a "simpler" film than Egoyan's previous work, and does have a more focused and clear-cut narrative than most of his other films, deep at it's core it belongs very much in their company, and the more one thinks about it, the less clear and obvious it becomes.
The film opens with a brief bit of narration by the title character (Amanda Seyfried), a high-priced escort working a wealthy area in downtown Toronto. She describes how she makes fantasies come true by becoming in essence whatever is wanted - not just in appearance, but in personality and character. We quickly shift to Catherine Stewart (Julianne Moore), a gynecologist with an office in the same area, watching Chloe get into a car. Stewart has a husband, David (Liam Neeson), a music professor and pretty serious flirt, and it's David's birthday and Catherine has a big surprise party planned for him. But David is flying home from New York and misses his flight, which upsets Catherine and also sets her radar off. A quick spy of a message left on his phone leads her to wondering if he's having an affair, and it doesn't help matters any that their teenage son Michael (Max Thieriot) is also getting more action than she is, bringing a girl home to sleep over without his mother knowing about it.
So Catherine wants to make sure about her suspicions before confronting David, and decides to get someone to seduce him, finding Chloe at the bar in the hotel near her office. They had earlier met in a ladies' room at an expensive restaurant, with Chloe dropping a comb for Catherine to pick up - and Chloe thinks that it's Catherine she's supposed to service at first. Or does she? The major element in CHLOE the film that remains mysterious and "Egoyanesque" is that we are never - even at the dramatic ending - entirely clear about Chloe the character's motivations or honesty. She agrees to seduce David - but she then goes farther than Catherine wants. She calls Catherine at odd times; she finds Michael and follows him; and she takes advantage of Catherine's own loneliness and isolation and eventually seduces her as well. But what she doesn't seem to realize - and perhaps Catherine herself doesn't realize for a time - is that Chloe isn't her fantasy; her husband is - and she acts that out through Chloe as her way of being closer to the man she's estranged from. But at this point Chloe has allowed the fantasy to take her over as well, and unlike Catherine, who eventually is able to confront David and start to understand what's really going on, she seems to have no-one, and nothing to ground her, and starts to spin far out of control.
The critic Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote a short piece about this on his website - the only criticism of the film I've read - and mentioned that many other critics had, he felt, misinterpreted the film and didn't get what it is really about, which is a woman's midlife crisis. I have to say that anybody who can't see how that is the subject of this film probably shouldn't be a professional film critic; it's obvious within the first ten minutes and remains the central issue of the film throughout. I suppose it would be easy to call it an inversion of FATAL ATTRACTION, and certainly there are some points in common with that film and other "erotic thrillers" that tend to be about men who stray and the consequences they face; but CHLOE, apart from an ending that I thought was needlessly obvious and predestined, is much more concerned with exploring the inner reality of it's protagonist's mind - much more interested in getting at how the accumulation of years of work and neglect of a love life can lead to this place where one party would suspect the other, without really trying to understand either why the other might stray - or why she might think he would. In the end it's a fine examination of suppressed emotions and sexuality that ends up concluding that men and women are not all that different when it comes to such things - not nearly as different as they think they are; and the fact that we still think we're so different is half the problem.
The cast is terrific, with Moore proving again that she's one of the very best actresses of her generation as a wife and mother in absolute turmoil, trying to keep herself together but letting it out only very slowly and reluctantly, and Seyfried showing some real ability in the difficult role of an overly emotional cipher. Neeson has less to do but he excels at being the chaming rogue and he's certainly convincing enough as the potential adulterer - and the wounded, wrongly accused victim (maybe). The fancy, elegant settings, costumes and trappings of the film might seem a little overdone at first - but I think the point ultimately is that the material world means very little to anybody in the film when their hearts are wounded and their minds are racing to discover what is going wrong - and who is doing the wrong to them. And all the money and fancy careers in the world can't prevent a heart from straying.
The ending, as I said, seems a bit too conventional and simple to me, but on the whole Chloe is very solid work, and probably my favorite Egoyan film of the last decade or more.
Description of Chloe
A missed flight...a lack of intimacy...guarded secrets... To Catherine (Julianne Moore), every detail suggests that her husband David (Liam Neeson) has been unfaithful. But there's only one way to know for sure. Catherine pays the mysterious Chloe (Amanda Seyfriend), an escort, to seduce her husband. She wants to know exactly how far she can trust him. But soon Catherine finds herself pushed beyond all limits as passions burn and obsessions build. From Academy AwardŽ-nominated director Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter, 1997)."Intriguing, darkly erotic." -Tom Keogh, Seattle Times
"A supercharged erotic thriller!" -Caryn James, Marie Claire
"?a sexually charged drama?" -Bruce Kirkland, Toronto Sun
"good, dirty fun." -Ain't It Cool News
"devilishly sexy." -Paul Fischer, Dark Horizons
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