DVDs in Review

Chloe (Atom Egoyan, 2009)

Title: Chloe (Atom Egoyan, 2009)

Release date: July 19 2010

Certificate: 15

Format: DVD, Blu-ray

RRP: £17.99 (DVD)

Rating: 3.5/5

Reviewed by Dave Lancaster

Amanda Seyfried is an intriguing choice for the title role. She was previously all bubbly and Hollywood-smiles in ‘Mamma Mia!’ but she’s taken a real risk with her successful family friendly image by playing the possessive prostitute quietly terrorising a fractured home in ‘Chloe’.

Her beautiful features only exaggerate her perceived innocence – she’s got big, longing eyes and large, full lips that offset the rest of her face, making her seem almost childlike in appearance for the close-ups. But her character (and her nuanced performance) is far more adult. You don’t see it coming, and that’s probably why Atom Egoyan cast her alongside established mature faces Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson. 

Moore plays Catherine, a gynaecologist who tellingly informs a patient that an orgasm is just a “muscle contraction”. It’s all business for her; she’s lost her spark. Unlike her university lecturer husband David (Neeson) who flirts with everyone in sight and is kept youthful by his job around teenagers.  Since their son was born, the relationship lost its passion. Catherine astutely puts it that David used to be her lover and now he’s her best friend.

Moore comes to believe that Neeson is cheating on her, so she (somewhat stretchingly) hires a prostitute to seduce him and see if he takes the bait. Chloe will report back the information to her, much like a private detective.

This is when the film’s first twist takes place – Catherine hates that her husband may be cheating but she loves hearing the prostitute tell her about it. This fetish begins to border on obsession, releasing her repressed bisexuality and she embarks on an affair with Chloe thinking that they’re both sharing the same woman.

There are more surprises in store as Chloe starts to get possessive as well, turning the film away from a relationship drama into more of a ‘Fatal Attraction’ territory, resulting in some cheap thrills and suspension of common sense to get the plot moving along. The film does get more ridiculous in terms of story as it progresses, but the characters remain compelling to watch. All three major characters are undergoing a change, brought on by sexual desire.

The sex scenes in Egoyan’s film are explicit, as are the frank descriptions of the offscreen ones, but they’re important to the story. They’re also pieced together brilliantly through excellent, tasteful cinematography and a mysterious score, resulting in dreamlike soft focus and ambiguous depictions of the senses.

 
‘Chloe’ ties itself up too neatly in terms of action, but allows the characters to continue running – it’s a fascinating journey. What’s most refreshing about this film is that the focus is taken away from Neeson to give the two leading ladies the real meat of the story. Characters are handled voyeuristically, allowing us to draw our own conclusions. As Egoyan has shown time and time again (‘Exotica’, ‘Where the Truth Lies’) sexual relationships are never simply black and white.