Chloe

  

Cribbed from Anne Fontaine’s Nathalie (2003) and star-studded with Depardieu, Ardent, Béart, Chloe is Atom Egoyan’s brush with the mainstream, in cast and ancient narrative, a glossy, engaging-enough sexual drama with aspirations to irony and wisdom, but shot through with cliché and bad faith.

We know it can’t be tawdry sexploitation (can it?), because the protagonists are so sophisticated: gynecologist Moore is married to classical music professor Neeson, who is seen first lecturing on Don Giovanni and his conquests. They live in a chic, boxy, modernist house, all exotic hardwood trimmings and giant windows looking like a Mondrian from the outside. She thinks he’s cheating, and through a chance encounter (sparing a square, no less) hires Seyfried’s eponymous hooker (high-class) to see what husband does when approached by an attractive young woman. Obviously this is not a good idea. 

The classy, net-diffused montage of said hooker that opens the film is out of time, as she languorously, ideally, dons lingerie whilst musing in voiceover on the power of words and her ability (professional duty, indeed) to use them to become whatever her client desires. Likewise, her body must be used, we hear, to create an illusion of intimacy. An interesting exploration of the mind/body dichotomy is sadly unforthcoming. Words do indeed prove important, but even for one such as I, normally slow to spot a twist, the lying does not convince for long. 

 

Red herring or window dressing, a lovingly- lit shot of Chloe’s unbelievably obvious track marks performs the same vague function; poor Seyfried’s cuckoo in the nest is treated as a cipher throughout. Her unknowableness produces ignorance and inconsistency rather than ambiguity, never mind complexity. A similar decoration, more effectively jarring, is lighting that frequently shadows Seyfried’s upper lip to give her a John Waters mustache; her large eyes are as disconcerting as ever (she also has great hair throughout). Julianne Moore, on the other hand, is one of the rare performers who can act even solely with her upper lip, so she is great as usual, even if her central part is somewhat underwritten. Neeson is staggeringly uninteresting as usual, but is mercifully mostly sidelined.

Films that come immediately to mind: Fatal Attraction, Theorema, even The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. Chloe is not even that good. Bonding over some ghastly indie rock band and how she “hates the internet,” Chloe seduces son Michael, for whom the climax should be a royal head-fuck. Could her final shot reveal her to be an angel sent to teach this family something about itself? If so, it is too late for all concerned, us included. 

The closing scene is such a Hallmark happy ending of smiling family with party guests and their precious house, that the sense of satire tips from mostly imperceptible to blunt instrument. Egoyan signs off with hatred, for his characters’ callous self-absorption and social veneer. This is likewise too little too late, and rather akin to a jab at the audience for having (assumably) enjoyed what has gone before. That it all played like an extended  excuse to bathe a classy hotel room in warm golden light, and have Seyfried and Moore make out naked on the bed, rather undercuts the point.  

d Atom Egoyan p Jeffrey Clifford, Joe Medjuck sc Erin Cressida Wilson ph Paul Sarossy ed Susan Shipton pd Phillip Barker m Mychael Danna cast Amanda Seyfried, Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, Max Thieriot, R.H. Thomson, Nina Dobrev
(2009, US/Can/Fr, 96m)