Chloe movie review. An Americanized and somewhat thriller version of the 2003 Anne Fontaine film “Nathalie…”, Chloe seems in a rush to move in a populist direction by diluting the original idea. Atom Egoyan obviously adopted Fontaine’s work very quickly and took action, as his 2005 film, Where the Truth Lies, which we consider to be his masterpiece, has a similar atmosphere. It is possible to see the traces of this ‘quickness’ in creating the intrigue. Undoubtedly, screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson has as much to do with this as Egoyan.
Chloe is a ‘high-class’ prostitute, as in the original story. She undertakes a ‘special mission’ upon the request of a rich woman who suspects her husband is cheating on her and whose sex life is at a standstill. The later stages of her mission, which is to ‘approach’ the man and report his reactions to the woman, show us that after a while, Chloe has a ‘special’ plan. This plan ultimately destroys everything with an extremely tense structure…
Anyway… Let’s forget the name for a bit and talk about the reasons why Egoyan could not hold on to the story… First of all, there is no trace of the character depth in the original film. At Chloe’s. We understand more or less the motivations of the three main characters of the story, perhaps because we know the first movie, but there is no ‘formula’ in the script that can underline what they do. Everything comes to the big screen one after the other, as if following a certain order, and the characters, who should have their ups and downs, are rendered monotonous.
While there is a composition work that takes Fanny Ardant’s character deeper with each step in “Nathalie…”, we have a hard time believing Julianne Moore’s ‘ordinary’ moves in the ‘confused’ woman, which is actually Moore’s perfect choice for this role. It looks like a caftan. We don’t count Liam Neeson at all anyway, he hangs around with all his ineffectiveness throughout the entire story.
Perhaps Amanda Seyfried’s influence can be felt in the film; The young actress is able to attract the audience and keep them entertained with the help of her ‘interesting’ physique. However, at this point, “Chloe” breaks away from the original film. Seyfried, who is only in her first half of her 20s, obviously cannot come close to the impact of Emmanuelle Béart, who was 40 years old when “Nathalie…” was filmed. He seems to have been forced into the ‘maturity’ outfit required for this role.
One of Atom Egoyan’s main mistakes is that after a while he tried to take the story in a direction similar to Fatal Attraction. The drama of ‘The Situation’ must not have been enough because the director is trying to move into such a lane. However, we cannot help but think that the story should have been content with the ‘clinging to people’ aspect and focused on their ‘reacting to influence’ moods.
It would undoubtedly have been much more successful if it had relied on ‘usable’ images of people who were dissatisfied with their lives and were consciously or unconsciously looking for certain exit points.
Egoyan still uses the advantages of being a good director… Despite everything, he manages to keep this film, which could turn into a ‘rag’ in the hands of an ordinary filmmaker, at a certain level. It focuses on an atmosphere that leans towards ‘film noir’ rather than the story, and at this point it does its job well. As we said at the beginning of the article, he creates a work close to the atmosphere of his masterpiece “Beyond the Real” and prevents it from being a complete ‘big mistake’.
Chloe (2010)
Directed by: Atom Egoyan
Starring: Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried, Max Thieriot, Nina Dobrev, Meghan Heffern, Natalie Lisinska, Laura de Carteret, Mishu Vellani, Tiffany Lyndall-Knight, Kathryn Kriitmaa
Screenplay by: Erin Cressida Wilson
Production Design by: Phillip Barker
Cinematography by: Paul Sarossy
Film Editing by: Susan Shipton
Costume Design by: Debra Hanson
Set Decoration by: Jim Lambie
Art Direction by: Kim McQuiston
Music by: Mychael Danna
MPAA Rating: R for strong sexual content including graphic dialogue, nudity and language.
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Classics
Release Date: September 13, 2009 (TIFF), March 10, 2010 (France), March 26, 2010 (United States and Canada)
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