The Liberian Girl got a day off work this weekend and she wanted to go to the movies. I suggested a Korean film or an Irish film or a bottle of rum and Hot Tub Time Machine. She suggested Chloe. Guess which movie we bought tickets for on Saturday?
Neither of us knew much about Chloe. Based on chatter around the ticket-buyng machine at the AMC 14 in Georgetown, neither did anyone else. (We overeard someone ask their machine, ”What is Chloe? I haven’t seen any commercials for that one.”) The Liberian Girl had seen a trailer for it and assessed it as potentially sexy with a great cast, which was enough to get me to cough up $21.50 for two tickets.
The film stars Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson and Amanda Seyfried. (You may remember Amanda from Mamma Mia! I didn’t. But you may.) Moore plays a wife. Neeson plays a husband. Seyfried plays a call girl. The wife, who is also a doctor, suspects the husband, who is also a professor, of infidelity. Consequently, the wife hires the call girl to tempt the husband in order to determine if he is capable of infidelity or not. The call girl accepts the gig and goes to work. But who exactly is she working on? Or for? And to what end?
That’s where the film is supposed to get interesting. And it kinda does. The husband, who is presented to us as an aggressive flirt, appears to be an easy mark. The wife, who is presented to us as a combination of suspicious and curious, appears to have a blurry agenda. As we learn that the wife’s suspicions may have been correct, we learn that the wife is in need of something more than just confirmation.
There’s more to say about the plot than that, but anything more would be too much of a spolier. I will tell you that the movie isn’t going to tease you without paying off. (Translation: yes, you get to see some boobs.) I’ll also tell you that I found it to be a bit underdeveloped. Stuff happens that forces you to make certain assumptions and there aren’t enough subtle details presented in the film to enable you to thoughtfully fill in the plotpoints that the filmmakers glossed over. It’s not terrible, but it asks too much of the viewer — so much that you could be distracted. In the event of distraction, you may lose the ability to enjoy what should have been a tantalizing and poignant mystery. In the end, I found it to be a film that wanted to be unconventional, but settled, to some degree, for convention.
After the film, the Liberian Girl asked me about the husband and his flirtatiousness/infidelity. We chewed on that for a while over drinks at the bar next door. Not just the husband, but on the nature of temptation and infidelity as they pertain to aging couples. It was the kind of intense conversation that the filmmakers probably wanted to inspire. It’s also the kind of “What would you do?” exchange that ruins a lot of dates and, eventually, a lot of relationships. Thankfully, our Date Night was not ruined.
Although, I kinda regretted spending more than matinee prices on the tickets.
DYL MAG Score: 6
