Chloe (2010)
Directed by Atom Egoyan
Catherine and David Stewart are a well-to-do couple living in a posh area of Toronto, but all is not well in paradise. Catherine suspects that David is cheating on her, so she hires an escort named Chloe to meet David and see if he gives in to temptation — but events spin out of control when Chloe spills the details of her torrid encounters.
21 connections found
View:
21 films that influenced Chloe
What critics say influenced Chloe
Under the ironclad laws decreed by movieland, we know that cheating on a spouse leads to nothing but trouble (Fatal Attraction); snooping on a suspected philanderer will only uncover things you really didn’t want to know about (What Lies Beneath, every Lifetime movie ever); and, as shown in Atom Egoyan’s Chloe, hiring a prostitute to tempt your spouse into infidelity is not such a terrific idea.
But Erin Cressida Wilson’s script merely grazes the theme, instead taking us on a “Fatal Attraction”-like detour with Chloe in the family-destroying stalker role.
It’s like we’ve fallen through the looking glass into a Lifetime TV Fatal Attraction knockoff.
“Chloe” takes that rather improbable situation as its starting point — before veering into creepy, “Fatal Attraction” territory.
Based on the terrible 2003 French film Nathalie, Chloe unspools like a limp copy of Fatal Attraction with way more sheen than substance.
Even when Chloe is all the more transforming into Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction," Seyfried remains not only immensely watchable, but also believable and sympathetic.
The verdict: Begging comparisons to the work of director Adrian Lyne (“Fatal Attraction,” “Indecent Proposal,” “Unfaithful”) isn’t the best way for Egoyan to halt the perception that his career is floundering, but he brings enough atmosphere and finesse to “Chloe” to trick viewers into thinking there might be some depth to the film’s tawdry events.
The verdict: Begging comparisons to the work of director Adrian Lyne (“Fatal Attraction,” “Indecent Proposal,” “Unfaithful”) isn’t the best way for Egoyan to halt the perception that his career is floundering, but he brings enough atmosphere and finesse to “Chloe” to trick viewers into thinking there might be some depth to the film’s tawdry events.
Atom Egoyan and his screenwriter, Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, Fur ) are keen to impress on us how very enigmatic and mysterious the bond is between Catherine and Chloe.
Chloe is a remake of the 2004 French film Nathalie, and is the first of Mr. Egoyan’s films (The Sweet Hereafter and last year’s Adoration) that he didn’t write himself (Erin Cressida Wilson, who penned Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ode to spanking in Secretary, gets credit).
Not quite, although Erin Cressida Wilson’s (Secretary) script, based on the 2003 film Nathalie…, can’t quite manage that film’s self-possessed, quintessentially French combination of sang froid and simmering melodrama.
"Chloe" is based on a French film, adapted by screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson ("Secretary"), but it's right up Egoyan's alley as if he'd written it himself, a twisted tale of obsession and unexplained desire.
Working from a screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson ("Secretary"), Egoyan doesn't flinch from exploring the dark side of curiosity.
What really pushes “Chloe” from being just another failed remake of a movie that was perfectly good as it was into the realm of all-out, what-were-they-thinking? Disaster, though, is the adaptation of Fontaine’s original screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson, best-known for her screenplay for the fairly overrated kinkfest “Secretary.”
The project, an Americanized reinvisioning of 2003's French-language "Nathalie," is molded into its own entity via Atom Egoyan's (1999's " Felicia's Journey ") assured filmmaking prowess and Erin Cressida Wilson's (2006's "Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus") undernourished but fascinating screenplay adaptation.
Director Atom Egoyan usually creates his own extraordinary screenplays; here, though, he has adapted a 2003 movie called "Nathalie...," by French director Anne Fontaine, and delegated the scripting to Erin Cressida Wilson, the author of such enterprisingly strange films as "Secretary" and "Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus."
In "Chloe," which Egoyan directed from a script by Erin Cressida Wilson ("Secretary," "Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus"), Julianne Moore plays a Toronto gynecologist named Catherine who suspects her husband, David (Liam Neeson), is having an affair.
The script is by Erin Cressida Wilson, whose affinity for kink has been on full display in such films as Secretary and Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus.
The Canada-based, Oscar-nominated director Atom Egoyan has plenty of experience with adult dramas about sex, including Exotica (1995) and Where the Truth Lies (2005), and his new Chloe -- which is a remake of the 2003 French film Nathalie -- comes with his usual brand of chilly intelligence and maturity.
In films great ("Exotica") and flawed but watchable ("Where The Truth Lies"), Egoyan isn't afraid to "go there," whether it's depicting sex on-screen, or more daringly, how people really think about sex on-screen.
"Chloe," like his great film " Exotica " (1994), is about sexual attraction confused by financial arrangements.
When that project had been announced, many questioned why Egoyan, who had made a name for himself with such enigmatic and emotionally devastating dramas as “Exotica” and “The Sweet Hereafter,” would want to invest his time and talent in bringing a roman a clef novel from Rupert Holmes, best known for penning the immortal “The Pina Colada Song,” to the big screen and after getting a load of the always turgid and rarely tumescent results, they were still wondering.
With his work on “Exotica” and “Where the Truth Lies,” Egoyan has danced on the sticky floors of sexual fixation before, yet “Chloe” is his most accessible stab at the genre (in fact, the picture is a remake of a 2003 French film).
Few filmmakers have the gift of Atom Egoyan, the Canadian director of Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, of establishing a mood so supercharged that your internals combust.
Isolation is a theme that runs through many of director Atom Egoyan's films (The Sweet Hereafter, Felicia's Journey), and he touches on it again in Chloe, a sexy thriller based on the French film Nathalie.
The project, an Americanized reinvisioning of 2003's French-language "Nathalie," is molded into its own entity via Atom Egoyan's (1999's " Felicia's Journey ") assured filmmaking prowess and Erin Cressida Wilson's (2006's "Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus") undernourished but fascinating screenplay adaptation.
Chloe is a remake of the 2004 French film Nathalie, and is the first of Mr. Egoyan’s films (The Sweet Hereafter and last year’s Adoration) that he didn’t write himself (Erin Cressida Wilson, who penned Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ode to spanking in Secretary, gets credit).
Overrated director Atom Egoyan shows control over his narrative, which improves over his last few pictures (“Adoration,” “Ararat” and “Where the Truth Lies”) which had no tangible stories of which to speak.
It's the first feature he's directed from a script not his own — the writer is Erin Cressida Wilson ("Secretary") — and in it he adheres to a straightforward, accessible linear template that avoids the fractured abstractions of a film such as "Adoration" or "The Sweet Hereafter."
Director Atom Egoyan, who also directed Adoration, Where the Truth Lies and Exotica, includes an appropriately brisk pace, exquisite cinematography and a well-chosen musical score.
This concept of narration as a medium for reimagining reality builds directly out of Egoyan’s last effort, 2008’s Adoration , but whereas that film felt overstuffed with densely wrought thematics, Chloe instead feels too hollow, a sexy but largely unilluminating narrative that finally devolves into a fairly conventional thriller.
The Canada-based, Oscar-nominated director Atom Egoyan has plenty of experience with adult dramas about sex, including Exotica (1995) and Where the Truth Lies (2005), and his new Chloe -- which is a remake of the 2003 French film Nathalie -- comes with his usual brand of chilly intelligence and maturity.
Watching "Chloe," I was reminded of Egoyan's "Where the Truth Lies," in which Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon found themselves in various stages of undress with women and men.
In films great ("Exotica") and flawed but watchable ("Where The Truth Lies"), Egoyan isn't afraid to "go there," whether it's depicting sex on-screen, or more daringly, how people really think about sex on-screen.
For a little while, it seemed to be working--while his follow-up film, “Adoration,” was a frustratingly uneven work at times, it was at least ambitious and contained some beautiful artistic flourishes here and there--but with his latest film, “Chloe,” he has negated whatever forward momentum he might have had by coming up with another erotic drama of supreme silliness that is so wretched that it makes “Where the Truth Lies” seem almost coherent by comparison.
Overrated director Atom Egoyan shows control over his narrative, which improves over his last few pictures (“Adoration,” “Ararat” and “Where the Truth Lies”) which had no tangible stories of which to speak.
With his work on “Exotica” and “Where the Truth Lies,” Egoyan has danced on the sticky floors of sexual fixation before, yet “Chloe” is his most accessible stab at the genre (in fact, the picture is a remake of a 2003 French film).
Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried steam up the screen in the hottest lesbian coupling since Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve got busy in Tony Scott's 1983 vampire film "The Hunger."
Advertisement
Soon, however, we discover Chloe is more of a lesbian Fatal Attraction than a Last Tango in Paris, a tawdry, exploitative thriller that might have been good if it had spent half as much time creating characters for whom we could feel as it did situations to catch them in various states of undress.
Playing a successful Toronto gynecologist—Canada’s gynecological community has apparently recovered from the havoc wreaked by Jeremy Irons’ Dead Ringers twins—Julianne Moore is first seen advising a sexually frustrated client that an orgasm is little more than muscle contractions caused by proper stimulation of the clitoris.
This is mostly because in its heart of hearts Chloe is a silly late 1980s or early 1990s psychosexual thriller—a kind of Sapphic variant on Fatal Attraction (1987), with a good dose of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) thrown in for good (or bad) measure.
Without revealing the details of the various anguished conversations and romps on high-end bedding that lead up to the violent climax, I can say that the biggest aesthetic influence on Chloe's finale is not David Cronenberg (the Canadian filmmaker Egoyan has cited as a mentor), but the Paul Verhoeven of Basic Instinct .
Chloe is very much in that Fatal Attraction/Basic Instinct mould, though not nearly as thrilling or erotic as its steamy predecessors.
Advertisement
Egoyan clearly relishes the chance to indulge in a lush visual approach which rather directly evokes his favorite film, Alfred Hitchcock's " Vertigo ."
A wonderfully overwrought score by Mychael Danna, who also composed music for "The Ice Storm," transforms "Chloe" into the kind of romance novel Ang Lee might have written, with pleasures both guilty and otherwise.