Friday, March 26, 2010
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Friday, March 26, 2010
MOVIE REVIEW
Chloe
...In the Afternoon, Evening
And Night
Projection: Amanda Seyfried as Chloe and Julianne Moore as Catherine in "Chloe", directed by
Atom Egoyan.
Sony Pictures Classics
By
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Friday, March 26, 2010
Atom Egoyan makes a huge misstep with "Chloe", based on the French film
"Nathalie", which starred Gerard Depardieu a few years ago. In "Chloe",
which opened today, the Canadian director feels compelled to make an art-house
"Fatal Attraction"-type thriller. Mr. Egoyan dispenses of the intelligent
filmmaking he's adept at to make a near-tawdry work that
smacks of Hollywood hollowness. The film stars
Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson and Amanda
Seyfried.
David (Mr. Neeson) and Catherine (Ms. Moore) are married with a son.
David, a college professor, is stuck in New York City after missing
a flight back home to Toronto. Catherine, a gynecologist,
suspects David of cheating. She hires Chloe, a prostitute (Miss
Seyfried), to entrap, or at least test, his fidelity. Chloe reports back
with salacious, graphic details of her sexual trysts, adding a whirlwind of
tension, anxiety and panic to the equation.
Mr. Egoyan, who has excelled with such great films as "The Sweet Hereafter",
does an inexplicable about-face with his latest. "Chloe" is
predictable and as transparent as the rendézvous greenhouse one should never
throw stones in. You wonder how Catherine, depicted as an
isolated older woman projecting her desires and fantasies, can be so consumed as
to elude her own common sense. There's simply one thing that a character
need do in "Chloe" to end the movie after about 20 minutes, but for necessity's
(if not reality's) sake, the deed is not done. The film, with its red
herring specials, relies on sizable doses of
suspension of disbelief.
"Chloe" is a hall of mirrors reflecting a bland and fleeting
complexity in one character. Mirrors are a trademark of Mr. Egoyan, who often
uses children as manipulators or the manipulated in his films. In "Chloe"
however, we
feel more manipulated than the characters, and we see it coming. Style-wise there are
shots of long corridors and of people in the distance, as if
they are being spied upon, objectified or made to feel small and insignificant.
Even with the material presented, all three lead actors aren't bad here.
Mr. Neeson, who shot some scenes immediately before and just weeks after his
wife Natasha Richardson's tragic death, is good but has a smaller role than Ms.
Moore. The Academy Award nominee intensifies Catherine's own suffocation and helplessness, making
her more vulnerable, open and real. It's a strong performance by Ms.
Moore.
As Chloe Miss
Seyfried has those giant blue
pools for eyes that either call for your attention or devour you whole.
Her title character is merely a device, a template to propel the story forward.
As such, Chloe lacks inner workings. We get no true sense of her history or
aspirations beyond the film's central characters.
The film's tenuous script is
written by Erin Cressida Wilson. It's a script that smashes together episodic
conventions without the adequate development of a clear journey that reaches
each successive dramatic destination. Some of the scenes feel too staged,
too forced, and conveniently placed.
Tellingly, "Chloe" is the first film Mr. Egoyan
has directed that he hasn't written. Consequently "Chloe" feels
distant and hesitant, made more with trepidation than anything. Maybe it's
the constraint of directing someone else's screenplay. Whatever it is,
"Chloe" strangely lacks enough of Mr. Egoyan's pure cinematic voice and richness
of his craft. (Interestingly "Up In The Air"
director Jason Reitman (and his dad) are two of the producers of the film.)
"Chloe" features an erotic episode some American audiences are likely to
talk a lot about. While much of the world will simply chortle
when they see what the fuss (or lack thereof) is about, the point is that
Mr. Egoyan has directed a disappointing film by his standards.
And surprisingly Mychael Danna's music score is oddly cool and theatrical, one of the very few times Mr. Danna's great work hasn't fit
appropriately within the confines of a film.
With: Max Thieriot, R.H. Thomson, Mishu Vellani, Julie Khaner, Laura DeCarteret,
Natalie Lisinska, Tiffany Lyndall-Knight, Meghan Heffern.
"Chloe" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for strong
sexual content including graphic dialogue, nudity and language. The film's
running time is one hour and 36 minutes.
FOLLOW
Unscripted review of "Chloe":
Read more movie reviews and stories from Omar
here.
Read Omar's "Far-Flung Correspondent" reports for America's pre-eminent Film
Critic Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times -
here
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