Rating:
***½
By: Da’Mon Guy
Chloe is a fascinating, suspense story filled with manipulation, deception, mistrust, lust, and obsession. It’s a incredibly intimate tale that explores the lengths that desire can drive someone. The film showcases the talents of Julianne Moore (Blindness), Liam Neeson (The A-Team), and Amanda Seyfried (Jennifer’s Body).
A woman, Catherine Stewart (Moore), a very successful gynocologist, seemingly has it all. She’s attractive, has a thriving practice, and a on the surface, a perfect family. But Catherine’s family life is anything but perfect. Catherine has started to feel the affects of age, loneliness and slightly disconnected from her family. She has a teenage son that she can no longer relate to and husband that she has loss touch with. Catherine’s emotional instability and insecurities lead her to suspect that her husband of infidelity. She then hires a prostitute to seduce him in order to validate her suspicions.
Chloe is a story of seduction in the style of Fatal Attraction. The movie is a slow paced erotic thriller of deception, mistrust, and love. The movie opens with a brief dialogue by Chloe about her profession that gives some insight into the movie. Deception is the overriding theme of the film as the movie itself seduces the audience by leading us to believe that it’s about one point but in actuality it’s something other than what the audience is led to believe from the onset. Chloe manipulates the details of the story that creates a misleading plot in order to build anticipation for the real core of the story. It exquisitely gives you a slow build up influencing the audience to believe that it is the usual, well chronicled, unfaithful husband movie but then it quickly changes to all together different.
Chloe uses some really close camera shots to establish a level of intimacy. Many of the shots of the actors in the beginning are close shots of their face as we are able to discern the emotion that each actor is going through. This use of cinematography establishes a feeling of intimacy as it draws the audience close into the story. This establishes a level of personal connection between the audience and the main characters of the movie.
The film offers some really good quality performances, headlined by Amanda Seyfried as Chloe. This film is Seyfried's best to date as she portrays the obsessed Chloe. She depicts the scheming, emotionally unstable, prostitute to perfection. This was easily the best performance of the film as she manipulates Catherine in her pursuit of her affections. Chloe’s calculated manipulation of Catherine‘s insecurities was a treat to watch as this exhibits how things aren't always as they appear. This movie was also one of the better performances for Julianne Moore. Her character of Catherine was the focus of the movie as most of the movie revolved around Moore being able to convince the audience of Catherine’s insecurities, desires, and the emotional disconnection from her family. Moore does it admirably Liam Neeson gives a nice performance as the David Stewart. It was nothing special but it complimented the movie well.
Chloe was a very interesting movie. The movie is a slightly different twist the usual obsession perspective. This approach made for some very good viewing. The characters were well portrayed and I really liked the twist taking the story in a new direction as opposed to the overused cheating husband story. Not an outstanding movie but a good one nonetheless. It is more than satisfying enough to entertain.
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