If sex sells, as some maintain, "Chloe" should be a real blockbuster of a movie. The slick tale of a woman who hires a "professional escort" to do a little chick-check of her husband's fidelity stars Julianne Moore as the jealous wife, Liam Neeson as her flirtatious husband, Max Thieriot as their son and Amanda Seyfried as the harlot from Hell.
Of course, the French did it first, which detracts from some of the plot and some of the box office prospects.
Anne Fontaine, credited as a co-writer with Amanda Cressida Wilson on "Chloe," directed "Nathalie" in 2003, with Gerard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant as husband and wife, Emmanuelle Beart as the hired interloper.
Atom Egoyan, who directs the remake, keeps it moving rapidly, and when the story threatens to slow down, there's always a bout of sex to pick up the pace a little.
The movie opens with a warning for all husbands: If you're supposed to be at home on your birthday, be there. When David (Neeson) supposedly misses his plane and leaves a large number of guests hanging around his fancy Toronto living room, drinking his liquor, eating his food and waiting to surprise him, Catherine (Moore) becomes suspicious that he is philandering.
Rather than hire Philip Marlowe or Guy Noir, Catherine lets her own predilections get in the way after she meets Chloe (Seyfried) in a chance encounter in a restaurant rest room. Chloe works as an escort. Sex is extra, like fancy hubcaps or monogrammed cuffs. Seyfried certainly is lovely and sexy, with rosebud lips, a come-hither look in her eyes, blonde hair and more curves than Highway 94 between Weldon Springs and Augusta.
Catherine wants more than a yes-or-no answer about a bedroom rendezvous. She wants a full play-by-play description of the encounter, including a full statistical analysis. If Chloe and David were playing golf, she would demand to know the number of strokes and the size of the clubs. If they were playing baseball, she'd insist on learning the weight of the bat and the speed of the fast ball. Chloe picks up this little game rapidly, and we're off. There's a great deal of sexual activity and a great deal of talking about it by Catherine and David while Chloe sits around and poses provocatively.
The acting is generally good by all hands, though Seyfried overdoes it from time to time. There's also interesting work from Thieriot, who finds himself in an awkward position. The ending, unfortunately, is far too pat and easy, as if Egoyan and the writers could not find a better way out and finally threw up their hands and turned off the camera.
Opens today at several theaters.
–Joe