- Chloe movie poster - Studio Canal
Chloe is an affecting look at the dual natures of trust and sexuality (by way of a fraught marriage), yet it comes saddled with what many viewers might be unable to initially look at as anything but a major and potentially narrative-invalidating hiccup (so as not to spoil, I’ll say that it stands very close to another movie without saying the title of said movie). Even as an odd and perhaps unjustified turn of events (of this matter I will say no more), as a potential schism it isn’t enough to derail an otherwise compellingly told and altogether spiritually inhabited character study.
The incredible Julianne Moore (you may remember her from Short Cuts [linked through image is of an R or X-rated nature, depending on your background]) stands at the center of this hurricane as Catherine, a professional woman vainly groping for support in her personal life. Fearful of her husband David’s (Liam Neeson) fidelity (and not without good reason), she tries to understand and command the situation, albeit without a true understanding of her own emotional involvement. Suffice to say that the involvement of a professional adult escort – the titular Chloe, made angelic by the ravishing Amanda Seyfried (fun fact: a native of Allentown, PA, the town in the Billy Joel song of the same name [controversies notwithstanding] and, former home and birth place of yours truly; yes, this sentence interrupts the flow of the sentence too much) – only succeeds in complicating matters unpleasantly for all involved.
Chloe is a psychosexual force to be reckoned with, but it is Catherine who is most directly in the spotlight. Her emotional fractures are rendered here as beautiful, carnal pronouncements of feminine ability, only to be ultimately revealed as a deeper, human craving; one might say that Moore brings greater respect to the material with no disrespect to said material. Scriptwise, Chloe is partially indebted to pulp, but it retains a light artistic heft about its more prurient interests thanks to director Atom Egoyan’s auteurist, rather personal filmmaking methods. Call it prurience, justified.
Perhaps the only thing preventing Chloe from greatness is its own preferred method of modest, no-frills storytelling (some will say it whitewashes the material, others that it lends subtlety), which perhaps comes down to being a necessary tonal balance and admirable creative choice, as material of this nature might collapse under more vigorous circumstances. Time and future viewings will tell if the film ascends to or falls short of greater heights than those apparent at first glance. Until then, it certainly has enough filmmaking honesty to carry it along.
