Putting aside the question of necessity, it seems remakes of foreign films in Hollywood are more the flavor of the day than they have ever been. Success stories like the just released vampire thriller Let Me In (based on Sweden’s Let the Right One In, 2008) are rarer than failures like the crime against humanity Swept Away (based on the 1974 Italian classic of the same name).
Chloe, a remake of France’s Nathalie (2003) sits somewhere in the middle. The basic plot remains but the thriller element has been heightened to overdrive and not for the better.
Catherine (Julianne Moore, The Kids are Alright) seems to have it all. A successful Toronto gynecologist with a flashy designer home, she’s becoming increasingly suspicious that her distant husband David (Liam Neeson, Taken) is being unfaithful. Shut out of his life and that of her monosyllabic teen son Michael (Max Thieriot, Jumper), Catherine feels invisible and old. She mourns her once passionate marriage. Happening upon high class hooker Chloe (Mama Mia’s Amanda Seyfried) she employs her to bait David and test his fidelity. Catherine endures Chloe’s retelling of their encounters in all their explicit, tortuous detail yet she yearns for more.
The manipulative Chloe is a seductive mistress of wish fulfillment but we don’t learn a great deal about her and her motivations. It’s like she’s a vessel of erotic transference in Catherine’s attempt to reignite the passion in her marriage but she becomes much, much more. The sapphic insinuations of the original are now ramped up to consummation and Chloe becomes a little too eager to weave herself into Catherine’s life.
As an exploration of longing, paranoia, jealousy and deception with a twist, this well crafted film succeeds but the decision to add a preposterous element of bunny boiler proportions cheapens the whole exercise and reeks of Hollywood cliché. That’s unsurprising given the involvement of Ivan Reitman (yes, he of Ghostbusters fame) who produces here but it is puzzling when the film is helmed by indie auteur Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), reportedly a late addition to the production. You can see his attraction to the piece fascinated as he is with sexually charged material but here it seems he’s sold out.
Despite Chloe’s failings, it’s worth a viewing for the always dependable Moore who is superb here and brings some gravitas to proceedings. Still, her presence alone can’t save the film from its descent into a clichéd psycho shocker masquerading as art house fare.
Chloe opened in a limited national release in Australia on the 14th of October.
Director: Atom Egoyan
Cast: Julianne Moore, Amanda Seyfried, Liam Neeson, Max Thieriot
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