Atom Egoya, Sony Classics (04/03/10)

The makers of Chloe may well have intended to say something new about sex, relationships and the male/female dynamic but that gets lost somewhere along the way. Instead, the film opts for the road well travelled, sacrificing originality for mass appeal and  mutating from a potentially interesting drama into a predictable stalker thriller. This is the cinematic equivalent of making a New Years resolution to lead a healthier life only to find yourself back in the pub knocking back pints and peanuts by week three.
 
The title character is a high class call girl, a breed of hooker which is  popular in fiction but probably a rarity in real life. Chloe has neither a drug habit nor a small child to motivate her into pursuing her profession.  She does what she does out of a need to feel some kind of love. “I try to find something nice in everybody” she claims, “even if it just a small thing.”

Chloe is played by Amanda Seyfried (elevated to a higher status by the huge success of Mama Mia) who is undeniably gorgeous but here she is tarted up in a manner which gives her the appearance of the most sophisticated sex doll ever created. Her hair is long and blonde, her eyes are creamy, hypnotic whirlpools and her lips are so large and pouty you could happily bed down in them for the night. If Bambi opted for a sex change and then went on the game to pay for it then he would probably look a bit like Chloe.
 
Chloe’s looks are not just there to attract clients but also to blind outsiders to the more creepy side of her character. If you can concentrate on the voice over in the film’s opening scene, in which Chloe dons black lingerie, then you will hear clues as to both the young girl’s true nature and as to how the film will eventually pan out. Chloe is hired by a doctor called Catherine  (Julianne Moore) who wants her to act as a honey trap for her husband David (Liam Neeson,) whom she suspects of having an affair.  He is a professor of music who is very popular with his students, perhaps a little too popular with some of them. When one of his pupils sends him a suggestive text, intercepted by Catherine, it is the final straw for his suspicious wife.
 
Catherine meets up with Chloe in a seedy bar and asks her to flirt with her husband to see how he reacts and then report back to her. When David starts to make advances towards her the call girl goes way beyond her remit. Soon she is recounting stories of picnics in the park, fumblings in the greenhouse and finally an afternoon in a hotel room with the unfaithful  spouse. The more tales Catherine hears the more she is both appalled and somewhat intrigued and excited.  Having proved her point she decides to tell Chloe that her services are no longer required. However, making the break from Chloe, both physically and emotionally, proves to be more difficult and dangerous than Catherine imagined.
 
It is easy to see why the Canadian director Atom Egoyan would have been drawn to the themes in Chloe (an adaptation of the French film Nathalie). In his earlier works such as Exotica and Where the Truth Lies he has already shown an interest in exploring the distance between people who should be close and the colder, more clinical side of human relations. Modern life and love, the film seems to suggest, are pretty frigid. Moore’s character is a gynaecologist (involving one of the less arousing forms of intimate contact) who dismisses the female orgasm as being no great mystery and merely a biological process. The characters communicate easily by text and over the internet but find face to face encounters to be more difficult. There is physical contact between them but it comes from love making rather than the emotion of love itself. This chilly mood is emphasised by the film’s stark lighting and the couple’s home which, although occupied, seems strangely vast and empty.
 
It is shame that the film has a similarly frosty affect on its audience. Compared to some of Egoyan’s other films Chloe is a veritable rollercoaster and yet it still does not quite hold your attention to the final act which is sadly overblown. We have seen this subject matter tackled better elsewhere. The sex scenes certainly raise an eyebrow with their frankness and both Moore and Seyfried get up to naughtiness which many A-listers would never consider performing on screen. No doubt the presence of the highly regarded Egoyan assured them that these moments would be handled correctly. Indeed they are, although Chloe does sometimes comes across as a classier version  of those ‘erotic’ thrillers which used to fill the up the Channel Five schedule in the station’s early days. Sad to say but, considering the talent involved, Chloe is an overall disappointment.
 

review: Alan Diment

sonyclassics.com/chloe