FILM REVIEW: CHLOE

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Chloe could easily be surmised as Fatal Attraction with a Sapphic twist, though I doubt the prospect of girl-on-girl action is what drew Canadian auteur, Atom Egoyan, to remake the French film, Nathalie (2003), or direct a film he did not write; the screenplay here penned by Erin Cressida Wilson. Just as odd is the involvement of Ivan and Jason Reitman, fellow Canucks, as producers.

The “girls” in question are Catherine Stewart (Julianne Moore) and Chloe (Amanda Seyfried); the former a gynecologist who suspects her husband (Liam Neeson) may be cheating on her, the latter an escort whom the doctor hires as bait to tempt her husband in order to catch him out.

Of course, none of that plays out as it should with Chloe seeming to have her own agenda, which involves seducing the good lady doctor. Catherine succumbs but regrets it immediately, but hell hath no fury like a hooker with a mother complex; the third act descends into familiar 'if I can't have you no-one can' crazy jilted lover territory.

That said, both Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried are very watchable and not just when they're making out. Moore is one of those actresses I could watch in anything and it's often easy to forget just how good she is. Her serious but paranoid Catherine is completely unrecognisable from the ditzy but lovable half of a lesbian couple she played in this year's The Kids Are All Right.

And Seyfried, a young actress who seems to have appeared in every second film in the last few years (Mamma Mia!, Dear John, Letters To Juliet) gives, for mine, her most convincing performance yet as the alluring but unhinged siren; her large eyes and golden hair giving her an other worldly beauty which understandably draws Catherine in but should also start alarm bells ringing.

Never having seen the French film upon which it is based, I can't say whether Chloe is faithful to, worse than or an improvement upon its source material. But as a psycho-sexual thriller, it's mildly intriguing as opposed to provocative, neither stimulating the mind, or other body parts, as hoped given the talent involved.