CHLOE

This is the trailer to CHLOE, Atom Egoyan’s new movie.  When I read the script more than a few times back in 2007 and 2009, it felt like confectioner’s sugar.  Erin Cressida Wilson wrote it, and I had no idea it was adapated from a French film (Amanda Seyfried looks like she’s from France, doesn’t she?  Either that or another fucking planet.) which is a shame because had I known there was a sexy French movie starring Emmanuel Beart, I would’ve Netflixed the shit out of it. If a script is adapted from something, the title page should ALWAYS reflect that.

CHLOE is about a woman who hires a hooker to lure her husband so that she can find out if her husband has (or has the capacity to, I suppose) cheat on her.  It’s a ludicrous script, filled with on-the-nose dialogue and absurdly precise descriptions of sex.  It’s a grown-up WILD THINGS, in a way, replete with the lesbian subtext that doesn’t stay subtext for very long.  My favorite part of the script — or, well, one of them considering there are simply so many parts here I dug — was that Catherine the main character is an OB/GYN, and the script includes more than a few graphic scenes with her at work talking to and looking at vaginas.  The script wants us to get off on her job in some way; it also showcases how Catherine’s clinical ways have bled from work to home and that’s a large motivator for why she hires the titular Chloe.  The movie hinges on Chloe describing to Catherine all the different ways she screws Catherine’s husband.  It’s Penthouse Forum in an art movie, and it’s just as ridiculous as that sounds.

I gave the script a consider; it’s wacky pablum in the end, a trifle, and the part of the script that should’ve been the best (Single White Female Chloe) was always the weakest.  Had I known Egoyan was directing, the tawdry ribald genre-slumming would’ve made all the sense in the world; he has a knack for elevating this kind of thing, and he’s got an eye for twisted sexuality done in an adult, coherently mature way.

The script is a great example of taking a concept and turning it.  I’m going to spoil some plot details here (though they’re intimated in the trailer), so look away if you wish to remain untainted.  The concept is woman hires hooker to lure husband.  That’s not enough, though — that’s only the beginning of the story.  For that to be a movie, it needs something more, a complication, something that elevates it from one-liner to developed narrative.  So the script has Catherine and Chloe start an affair of their own, and then we start to doubt whether or not Chloe is telling the truth about sleeping with Catherine’s husband at all.  We even suspect that Catherine’s belief that her husband is unfaithful could be another fabrication.  The characters are all lying to themselves and each other, and figuring out who’s telling the truth becomes nigh impossible until the final reel.

The third act is something of a mess.  Instead of tying up loose ends, the script just creates convenient character motivations out of whole cloth and prays we won’t notice.  The script takes itself too seriously to drag itself out of the genre ghetto, and at times it feels too much like SINGLE WHITE FEMALE but more lesbian-y.  I can’t imagine it’ll be a big domestic box office hit — business-wise, this movie makes sense in ancillary markets (DVD, overseas), with the domestic release little more than a marketing campaign for the DVD/VOD release.  It’s a perfect addition to the Egoyan pantheon, though.

I’m on the lookout for the script.  If I find it, I’ll post it.