One of the more ambitious genre filmmakers around, Atom Egoyan bravely takes on tawdry tales and tries to subvert them. In the spirit of his saucy Where the Truth Lies, he remakes French director Anne Fontaine’s 2003 potboiler Nathalie. . . as a critique of technology-induced alienation and the ambiguous consolations of storytelling.
Catherine (Julianne Moore in tight-lipped Isabelle Huppert mode), a middle-aged gynecologist, suspects her husband, David (Liam Neeson), a professor with a glad eye for the coeds, of fooling around. She hires a wide-eyed prostitute (Amanda Seyfried from Mamma Mia!) to seduce him and then relate to her everything that happens.
This kinky arrangement develops into a polymorphously perverse tango of voyeurism, fetishization, quasi-incest, and beyond. Although offering plenty of material for Freudian and postmodern delectation, Chloe succumbs to its conventions and devolves into a rehash of Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct.
