Chloe. (15.)
Directed by Atom Egoyan.
Starring Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried, Max Thieriot, Meghan Heffern. Streaming on MUBI.com til April 24th, as part of their Perfect Failures season. 99 mins.
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t get involved in Fatal Attraction-style erotic thrillers. This latest film from Atom Egoyan is all longing looks and snatched infidelities in locations of architectural significance in Toronto, particularly the oversized greenhouse that is the home to cultured, successful couple Moore and Neeson.
The plot is the old standard about the woman who suspects her husband of being unfaithful and hires a prostitute to flirt with him and test his fidelity. It's all a bit Kate Bush's Babooska, but the prostitute Chloe (Seyfried) proves to have her own agenda.
There's certainly a great deal of surface sophistication and the film has some of that gently gliding dislocation that is the trademark of Egoyan's filmmaking. Overall though there really isn't much more to this than the kind of erotic thriller that used to be the Friday night preserve of Channel Five, other than in those the bodies would be more tanned and in warmer locations.
Julianne Moore gives a very honest study of a woman afraid of aging and fearful of all the things that will she lose. By contrast Seyfried has been handed a plot contrivance to play, one that works the whole bandwidth of male fantasy figures from the intelligent, coolly analytical professional lady of the night to the demented, unstable vengeful harpy.
I always admired the fact that Canada, The Land of Sombre Movies, wasn't content with having one master of cold, darkly intelligent movies in David Cronenberg, but also had another one in reserve, for the use in the event of an emergency. At one stage Cronenberg was down to direct Basic Instinct 2. Nothing came of that so Egoyan has instead embraced the erotic thriller route, but to no great effect. He brought some verve to Where the Truth Lies, Chloe though is like a sterile parody.
Directed by Atom Egoyan.
Starring Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried, Max Thieriot, Meghan Heffern. Streaming on MUBI.com til April 24th, as part of their Perfect Failures season. 99 mins.
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t get involved in Fatal Attraction-style erotic thrillers. This latest film from Atom Egoyan is all longing looks and snatched infidelities in locations of architectural significance in Toronto, particularly the oversized greenhouse that is the home to cultured, successful couple Moore and Neeson.
The plot is the old standard about the woman who suspects her husband of being unfaithful and hires a prostitute to flirt with him and test his fidelity. It's all a bit Kate Bush's Babooska, but the prostitute Chloe (Seyfried) proves to have her own agenda.
There's certainly a great deal of surface sophistication and the film has some of that gently gliding dislocation that is the trademark of Egoyan's filmmaking. Overall though there really isn't much more to this than the kind of erotic thriller that used to be the Friday night preserve of Channel Five, other than in those the bodies would be more tanned and in warmer locations.
Julianne Moore gives a very honest study of a woman afraid of aging and fearful of all the things that will she lose. By contrast Seyfried has been handed a plot contrivance to play, one that works the whole bandwidth of male fantasy figures from the intelligent, coolly analytical professional lady of the night to the demented, unstable vengeful harpy.
I always admired the fact that Canada, The Land of Sombre Movies, wasn't content with having one master of cold, darkly intelligent movies in David Cronenberg, but also had another one in reserve, for the use in the event of an emergency. At one stage Cronenberg was down to direct Basic Instinct 2. Nothing came of that so Egoyan has instead embraced the erotic thriller route, but to no great effect. He brought some verve to Where the Truth Lies, Chloe though is like a sterile parody.
