Chloe
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ You, you, you are so beautiful...
"I try to find something to love in everybody" says Chloe when asked how she was able to do what she does. Could we find something to love in Atom Egoyan's latest film?
Sex is what shapes the entire movie. The opening shot introduces the boobs of our titular child Chloe (Amanda Seyfried), and immediately, we hear Catherine (Julianne Moore) explaining the biological process of orgasm which is plainly put as "just a series of muscle contractions", and then cut to David (Liam Neeson) who is professing to a group of undergrad about his interest for Don Juan, which is synonymous to a "womanizer". But more poignantly, Moore's personal emotional crisis and sexual journey are what drive the whole film forward, but what if it is not what it all seems to be?
The story is a simple thing: successful gynecologist Catherine suspects her professor David (Liam Neeson) is having affairs with his students, so to get the goods of him, she hires an escort, who calls herself Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) to entrap him. And things get out of control, as these things always do,when Chloe reports back to Catherine stuff she and David did together in an PR maneuver. Ah--how sexy.
The first 60 minutes of the film was captivating and enigmatic enough for you to keep watching, but the twist finale was tantalizing and his focus on nudity and sex deviates disastrously from the original point of the film. The plot becomes impossible and ridiculous because Egoyan just brings forward all his favourite themes: sex, desire, relationship, family problem, examining the boundaries but wait--he doesn't go further! In the end, Egoyan wraps everything up conveniently as if he is done manipulating with the plot twist, turns and finally gives up because he is not interested after all, he has shown off enough eroticism and sexuality, and now he has nothing more to say so he leaves us in a jarring position.
The outlook of the film is cool, posh and captivating, but nothing like Egoyan's early distinguished works that define and earn him a Canadian auteur status. By the end, you walk out and feel like you don't know any of the characters. Why is that? There's obviously nothing wrong with the acting. I could answer that: Egoyan's creativity is fully exhausted in his earlier works and now he had to borrow material from Anna Fontaine's marital thriller Nathalie, and tried to Hollywoodize it, push up the erotic actions, and transposed the story's attraction to Canada (where Neeson's wife Natasha Richardson injured from skiing and died subsequently).
Chloe's voice-over is there at the beginning but is gone forever later on. I can't help but thinking if the narration is told from Chloe's point of view, instead of Catherine's, would Egoyan finally be able to Canadian-ize the French adult fairy tale and ultimately overcome the problems he has had in his recent works since Where the Truth Lies?
The hairpin in the last shot isn't a symbol of love, but only a vision. A vision of an Egoyanian ending. Everything that seems but isn't. You think you are watching an Egoyan film? Think again.
(Canada/USA, 2009)
