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Let's cut to the libidinal chase: You want something highly erotic?
You get it in "Chloe," from the opening shot of Amanda Seyfried, just waking up and performing her gauzy toilette: She slips a beautiful breast into its holster, dons some minimal lingerie, languidly lubricates her long legs and purrs, "In my line of work, you have to do ..."
What she has to do.
Cut to Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore, doing what they have to do, too, only in higher-class occupations. He's charismatic professor David Stewart, guest-lecturing out of town on "Don Giovanni." She's his wife Catherine, a capable gynecologist with a crowded waiting room. At first glance, they strike us as a happily married couple with a talented teenage son (Max Thieriot) and comfy upscale lifestyle.
But David somehow "misses" his flight home to Toronto -- and the big surprise birthday party Catherine had waiting for him there. Subsequent discovery of a "thanks for last nite" text message on his cell phone fuels her mounting suspicions.
If his sexuality is the main text here, the big subtext is hers -- and the sexuality of everyone around them. Their obnoxiously horny friend Frank indulges in PDAs with his tarty new girlfriend at a restaurant, while David flirts with the waitress. Everybody looks sexy and is having sex except her, or so it seems to obsessive, middle-aging Catherine: "I think I'm 19, and then I look in the mirror and I'm this old person."
- Starring: Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried.
- Rating: R for strong sexual content including graphic dialogue, nudity and language.
- Web site: 'Chloe'
Time for her fateful introduction to enigmatic, impossibly beautiful Chloe (Ms. Seyfried), whom she hires for a variation on the girl's escort services: to test David's fidelity in a series of "chance" encounters, directed by Catherine. Chloe's assignment is to report back with (increasingly graphic) accounts of sexual activity.
And then, as Mother would say, there'll be tears.
Talk about TMI -- too much information!
What starts as a melodrama-mystery evolves into a noir thriller in the hands of Armenian-born, Canadian-raised director Atom Egoyan, acclaimed for his complex character studies in "The Sweet Hereafter" (1997) and "Where the Truth Lies" (2005). Here, his Chloe is bursting with sex while his Catherine is decidedly "tweezed," in the late great Frank Zappa's term.
Under the microscope of much voyeuristic nudity, both actresses are terrific. Ms. Seyfried has graduated from "Mean Girls" and from lip-synching Abba songs in "Mamma Mia!" Her Chloe -- with those gigantic blue eyes, pouty lips and bombshell bod, utterly aware of her own charms -- is her best performance to date.
Ms. Moore is even better. Her Catherine is as icy as the city of Toronto, a wonderfully bad liar with a wonderfully bad nose, mousy-straight hair, pasty-white skin and freckled hands that find their way to Chloe's perfect smoothness. They love/hate each other from start. "We've taken this as far as I want to go," she finally says -- but what if the other wants to take it further?
Mr. Neeson as her Don Juan-abee husband and Mr. Thieriot as their oversexed, surly son are likewise fine -- quickly hitting "minimize" on their chat windows whenever she approaches. (FYI: Mr. Neeson interrupted filming in March 2009 to be with his wife, Natasha Richardson, after her brain injury in a skiing accident. She died after a few days, after which he returned to the set and completed his performance in two days.)
Paul Sarossy's arresting cinematography does wonders with sleek, hi-tech Toronto -- kinda creepy and uninviting, for all its nifty bars and restaurants. And the film's Hitchcockian aspirations come complete with Mychael Danna's tense, ominous, Bernard Herrmann-like score.
Erin Wilson's screenplay is directly derived from Anne Fontaine's "Nathalie" (2003), starring Gerard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant as the sexually troubled Parisian couple and Emmanuelle Beart as the stunning, cunning hooker. Ms. Wilson's script nicely renders the ambiguities and red herrings of the original -- but also replicates its cliches.
The real focus of this three-sided game is the mutually manipulative relationship between the women, more than with the affair(s) of the man. Its psychosexual drama twists the classic romantic triangle into a pretzel -- suspenseful and provocative, if not very convincing in the climax.
But it's sexy fun to watch, with a timeless moral: Be careful about what you want to know or find out -- and what you do with the information when you get it.
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