CHLOE

Some genres beg to be taken as a checklist. Romantic comedy: was it romantic? Was it comedic? Chloe is no romantic comedy, it is an erotic thriller. So I asked myself: was it erotic? Was it thrilling? For me, the answers in reverse order were “yes” and “YOWZA!”

Dr. Catherine Stewart (Julianne Moore) is crestfallen when her husband David (Liam Neeson) is a no-show at the surprise party she has planned for his birthday. He missed his flight by just a few minutes, he claims. That doesn’t seem like him. The next morning, Catherine snoops around on David’s phone and discovers a picture of him with one his students, a pretty girl, thanking him for “last night.” Catherine is smart enough not to act too surprised – we can already feel the great distance that has grown between these two people over the years.

Instead of confronting her husband, Catherine decides to conduct an experiment: she secretly hires an escort, Chloe (Amanda Seyfried), to stage an accidental meeting and flirt with David, reporting back to Catherine. Chloe is perfectly played by Seyfried, with those giant eyes that can make her look as crazy as she is beautiful. She tells Catherine that David was responsive to her advances. She kissed him. “I didn’t tell you to kiss him!” Catherine says angrily, but soon she hires Chloe to see her husband again… and again…

Although Chloe is a thriller, it doesn’t take long to get one step ahead of the plot when you consider the fact that David’s indiscretions with Chloe are only shown as flashbacks recalled as she talks to Catherine. Did they really happen? What matters is that Catherine is starting to get turned on by these meetings, and Chloe is starting to get turned on by turning on Catherine. (This is the “erotic” part of “erotic thriller.”) It’s not a romantic pairing that would ever have crossed my mind, but the chemistry is there. And it’s HOT.

But this movie is not about sexual identity, it is about sexuality, and communication. Thanks to a lack of communication, Catherine and David lost the intimacy they once shared – but Catherine feels closer to her husband as she fantasizes to Chloe’s X-rated confessions. We never learn much about Chloe herself, but she has clearly gotten lost in a maze of loneliness, sexuality, and mommy issues. When she goes off the deep end and adopts a psychotic ex-lover routine, it is thrilling to see Seyfried dial her eyes up to “full crazy.”

Moore is also fascinating to watch as a prisoner in her giant glass house (despite her social life and thriving career as a gynecologist), wondering how her husband and teenage son became total strangers to her. Catherine’s escalating desperation as Chloe invades her life is intense and compelling.

This movie is worth seeing for the chemistry between Moore and Seyfried alone – and also for the beautiful photography of Toronto! You may have been able to predict the ending by the time you finished reading the words “psychotic ex-lover,” but it’s a solid erotic thriller and offers more subtext than you may be expecting.