This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.

On the surface, Chloe looks like the sort of polished, art-house eroticism Bernardo Bertolucci used to peddle. Soon, however, we discover Chloe is more of a lesbian Fatal Attraction than a Last Tango in Paris, a tawdry, exploitative thriller that might have been good if it had spent half as much time creating characters for whom we could feel as it did situations to catch them in various states of undress.

Catherine (Julianne Moore) has reason to suspect her husband David (Liam Neeson) is having an affair. He conveniently misses flights home from business trips. He chats online at all hours with mystery friends. His phone is full of pictures of the beautiful young students he teaches. Hoping to catch him in the act and put her suspicions to rest, Catherine hires Chloe (Amanda Seyfried), a beautiful young escort, to test her husband’s fidelity. Catherine meets with Chloe for regular updates of her encounters with David, and is told explicit stories of animal lust. Mortified at first, Catherine soon finds herself confronting sensations she never before knew existed. Chloe’s reports, which at first enflamed her jealousy, now fill her with repressed desire. But if she gives in to her awakening passions, will she and her family ever escape Chloe’s grip?

Seyfried (Mama Mia) abolishes her previous cinematic innocence in becoming a nymphet Lolita. The very first image of the film is her naked voluptuousness. Her doe-eyed, China doll beauty fits the role exquisitely, and she does a mostly ideal job of never tipping us off as to whether she is a hurting young woman or a fixated, fanatical monster. We get the feeling early on that, while no evidence exists to support it, Chloe is in complete control. And that control forces us to ponder if what she says is completely truthful. Moore, an actress who seems to specialize in films about the consequences of infidelity, is, as is her habit, completely masterful. Neeson, who, aside for a late scene meant to comment on the loss of communication and intimacy within a marriage buffeted by time and circumstance, is mostly just along for the ride.

One would expect a film like Chloe to pulse in the loins with the thrill of forbidden fruit. But it is largely flaccid. Eroticism may begin in the eyes, but it takes up residence in the mind. Chloe never makes that short, synaptic journey and as such, remains undeniably titillating, but never genuinely arousing. Prurient interest may be enough for pornography and other mediums that strip sexuality of anything but its basest appetites, but it does not possess enough gravity to acquire narratives that necessitate emotional intelligence.

This erotic inertia is reflected in the film’s overall languid pacing as well. While not particularly tedious or dreary, Chloe never ratchets up the tension as one might expect or frankly, as the script demands. There is no apprehensive foreboding, but rather an even keeled emotional progression, the passivity of which makes the final quarter of the film seem even more preposterous than it otherwise should. First Chloe shows its hand too early, then it rockets away from reality in its final minutes, leaving any good will that might have existed, far behind.

Atom Egoyan is a largely one-track director. An Armenian-Canadian, his films almost exclusively deal with the genocide perpetrated upon his people by the Ottoman Empire during World War I. A legitimate grievance (and cinematic reckoning) to be sure, Egoyan’s dependence on a single issue, expressed in a variety of divergent narratives, has sapped his creative energy. Here, at last, in Chloe, a remake of a French film, he has embarked on a new course. Unless of course Julianne Moore is a stand-in for Armenia, Amanda Seyfried is representative of Turkey and that Sapphic sex scene was a metaphor for reconciliation. We’re on to you Egoyan.

© Copyright 2010 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.

Directed by: Atom Egoyan
Starring: Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried, Max Thieriot
Rated R for strong sexual content including graphic dialogue, nudity and language.
Running Time: 96 minutes