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Directed by Atom Egoyan
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Chloe
Everyone’s
entitled to a midlife crisis, and the filmmaker Atom Egoyan
is no exception. The
Armenian-Canadian filmmaker (who made that great movie “The Sweet
Hereafter” from the novel by Russell Banks) and who has also made a
number of near-great films – you can go to the Internet Movie Data Base
and then to Netflix to check them out – has now had his own midlife
crisis film, and it’s called “Chloe.” What’s
a midlife crisis film? It’s
when you can make all your fantasies come true – lots of sex, lots of
titillation about sex, a longtime marriage apparently breaking apart, and two
scrumptious actresses to act out all your fantasies: Julianne Moore, for
those of us of a certain age; and Amanda Seyfried
for those who aren’t. And
for the heterosexual women, there’s Liam Neeson,
whom frankly I don’t find attractive, because he’s almost
completely asexual. Bad casting. It’s
Liam’s birthday and Julianne has made a surprise party for him when he
comes home to Toronto on a flight from New York. Only he doesn’t take that flight
and the party withers on the vine.
Is he having an affair?
Julianne spots a call girl (Chloe, played by Amanda Seyfried) and decides to test Liam’s will and
fidelity. She makes contact with
Chloe, pays her and asks her to try and seduce Liam. Well, guess what? I won’t give it away. But then Julianne finds herself turned
on by Chloe, and one thing leads to another and you know what happens. Oh, and I forgot to mention that
Julianne and Liam have a son, Michael, who’s in the habit of bringing
his girlfriends home for the night, and guess who spends a night with
Michael? As
I say, “Chloe” is a middle-aged filmmaker’s dream. I’m happy for Mr. Egoyan, and I hope he gets back to making serious films
soon. Oh, by the way, you may have
noticed that Julianne Moore has a wonderfully freckled face. But she seems not to have freckles
covering the rest of her. Or
maybe they used a body double; we’ll never know. |