I have to admit I'm not really a fan of Atom Egoyan; his films always feel a little too 'antiseptic' for my tastes but "Chloe", a remake of the French film "Nathalie", works surprisingly well. A middle-aged woman, (Julianne Moore), who feels she's no longer that attractive and suspects her husband, (Liam Neeson), of playing around, hires a young escort, (Amanda Seyfried), to test his fidelity only for things to slip out of her control. It's a high-toned movie about the miseries of the rich which, to those of us who don't move in such salubrious circles, might not seem quite so miserable and it's set in a wintery Toronto.
Moore is superb but the real revelation of the picture is Seyfried who is outstanding as Chloe, (Neeson is miscast as an academic). This is Egoyan in De Palma mode; you keep expecting the inevitable lesbian relationship to develop and maybe even a knife to glint in the winter sunshine. Certainly Chloe's character fits the profile of potential movie psycho, either that or just a very sad young woman. If the plot twists are predictable, it hardly matters; this still looks and feels like a class act. Of course, it may be nothing more than high-class soft porn for the intellectual set. The choice, as they say, is yours but for once this was one Egoyan picture I could finally get my teeth into.
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