Chloe. Or Amanda Seyfried's way to make up for Dear John.
You know, there's always going to be that one hot up and coming actress in Hollywood that had just done a really big movie and will inevitably do a film where she is naked throughout? Well this movie is the Amanda-Seyfried-naked movie. No actually, this is the Amanda-Seyfried-naked-a-lot movie. Do not watch this in a Malaysian cinema. There were some sex scenes in this that were pretty fucking awesome!
So Chloe centres around a married couple played by Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson who have been married for a long time but a string of strange behaviour, shifty excuses and pictures of his young female students in his phone leads Julianne Moore to suspect that her husband is cheating on her. So she enlists the help of a callgirl named Chloe played by Amanda Seyfried of
Mamma Mia! to befriend her husband and seduce him so that she can catch him in the act. But what first started as a strictly business relationship between the two slowly turns into pure lesbian awesomeness!
The film is directed by Atom Egoyan, who's kind of made a signature for himself making erotic thrillers like Exotica and Where The Truth Lies. And while most are calling Chloe his weakest film, I thought it was pretty darn good. The film moves at an excellent pace, steadily balancing between an Egoyan typical erotic thriller and a character study.
Julianne Moore leads the first two acts of the film with a fantastic performance as she always gives in all her movies. Very tricky how her character plays out in this film being the suffering, sexually frustrated conflicted woman who's life opens up and begins to change with the presence of Amanda Seyfried's character. I can't say enough about how much admire Julianne Moore. And my God, she is like what? 50 years old now and she has a naked lesbian scene in here with Amanda Seyfried.... and she's actually hotter than her!
Liam Neeson is great to with the small role he plays in this but the star of the show which really only comes into full effect towards the last 15 minutes of the film is Amanda Seyfried. Her performance of Chloe starts out really good, but always in the shadow of Julianne Moore until the end. I hope I'm not spoiling anything if I said that there is a big twist at the end of Chloe, somewhere along the same vein as Fatal Attraction. And it's in that last 15 minutes, Amanda Seyfried proves her worth as a young actress.
In the very last scene of the film, and I don't wanna spoil much, but Amanda Seyfried becomes.... frightening. And I mean truly, genuinely scary. Remember how Tobey Maguire was in
Brothers and how you actually feared for Natalie Portman's character? Yeah, Chloe gets all fucked up like that and it was awesome. There's one part where Seyfried breaks the fourth wall and just stares at the camera, and it was totally freaky. Totally freaky... and totally hot! Did I mentioned that Seyfried is either fucking or naked throughout this whole movie? If that doesn't get you to watch this, I don't know what will.
And while Seyfried did shine in that segment, I was kinda disappointed that the ending chose the Fatal Attraction end route. The conclusion just felt so typical of that erotic thriller genre which this movie didn't feel typical about up until that point. I really wanted Chloe to end in a more clever, cerebral way but it fell flat.
I think Chloe is a good film, not incredible by any means. But it is a very solid, well paced, well acted movie that people can watch and enjoy but it will be forgotten in a few months.
RATING: 6.5/10
