Movie Review: ‘Chloe’

‘Chloe,’ Atom Egoyan’s new directorial work, is the lesbian version of Fatal Attraction. You can expect a high level of nudity and explicit, erotic sexual lesbian scenes that almost make it feel like soft core porn. The look of the film is different though and resembles more Stanley Kubrick’s artistic ‘Eyes Wide Shut.’ The pacing, cinematography and camerawork, even its musical score, ignites thoughts of the film. The acting is strong and the story, for 85% of its duration, is utterly enthralling… until it collapses at the very end in an hyperbolic mess.

A gynecologist (Julianne Moore) hires an escort (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce her husband (Liam Neeson), whom she suspects of cheating. The results will back fire on her and reveal a side of herself she didn’t know existed.

For most of the film, this erotic thriller carries a slow enjoyable pace. It never reaches the depths of boredom. Each scene is crafted carefully to develop the characters and the meat of the story. The situations they are all in are plausible, but with an edge to them. Then out of nowhere, 20 minutes before its denouement, it becomes risible and loses all cogency and believability. I don’t even want to try and figure out why that happened, but this movie could have been great.

Despite that one deficiency, the whole of the film should not be dismissed. The engrossing, sometimes transfixing artistic sensuality of the sequences will keep you glued to your seat. The premise evokes real questions that ultimately many marriages suffer from, such as – can one ever really be only with one person for their whole life?

‘Chloe’ has an answer for that and it’s not necessarily the one you want to hear. The movie is a bit twisted, but it is very entertaining, you can’t wait to see what happens next and am sure most of you will feel the same too.