At the beginning of Chloe, the latest film by Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan (Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter), gynecologist Catherine Stewart (Julianne Moore) tells one of her patients that an orgasm is simply the contraction of vaginal muscles – a basic stimulus response reaction. “There’s nothing magical about it,” she says. The rest of Chloe seems bent on proving Catherine wrong. Egoyan, as he has shown in a number of his other films, believes there is a whole lot more to sexual arousal than its base physicality.
Catherine’s sexual education, so to speak, begins when she suspects her husband, David (Liam Neeson), is cheating on her. David is a composer who teaches in New York and inadvertently stands-up his surprise birthday party back home in Toronto when he misses his flight. The next morning, Catherine stumbles upon a suspicious text message from a young girl on David’s phone. David is a consummate flirt, and their marriage has been un-sexed as of late, so Catherine assumes her attractive, salt-and-pepper-haired husband is having an affair with a student. Unwilling to confront him, Catherine instead decides to enlist an upscale prostitute, Chloe (Amanda Seyfried), whom she happens to meet in the ladies room of a fancy hotel restaurant, to solicit her husband and test his fidelity. Chloe begins meeting with David, and she returns to Catherine with stories of their encounters, which begin innocently before escalating into hotel room rendezvous. Catherine is broken-hearted by Chloe’s stories, but is also strangely aroused by them. As the intensity between Chloe and David’s relationship increases, Catherine becomes more enthralled, until she herself breaks down and sleeps with Chloe.
If you are familiar with Egoyan’s work, you will recognize Chloe’s world. David and Catherine live a privileged, bourgeois life. They collect art, live in a contemporary style home in an upscale Toronto neighborhood, and have sophisticated friends. David is an accomplished composer, and they have one teenage son, Michael (Max Thieriot), who is a high school senior following in his father’s musical footsteps. They are enlightened, hands-off parents. When Michael’s girlfriend stays the night in his room, Catherine rages, but ultimate concedes to his personal freedom, simply asking: “did you use protection?”
These characters are the intellectual bored – representative of a detached, egocentric post-modern class that reflects our society’s image of success and sophistication. For Egoyan, this kind of existence also fuels sexual fetish – sex is used as a way to desperately fill-up or find-out something within ourselves. It is an existence that is hyper-controlled, and sex represents a last vestige of a connection to something wild and mysterious about our humanity. After Catherine’s encounter with Chloe, she freaks out and tries to end their relationship, but Chloe won’t have it. She has become enthralled with Catherine, not merely physically, but also with what Catherine represents: the contemporary woman stuffed with anxiety and bent on controlling her universe. Chloe see’s herself as an uncontrollable force, something wildly honest and therefore able to cure Catherine’s languishing loneliness. Chloe’s wildness becomes dangerous. She breaks into their home, seduces Catherine’s son, and threatens to destroy Catherine’s life.
Egoyan’s bold inquiry into the heart of our sexual nature sustains him as a unique and significant storyteller for our sex-obsessed era. His films are as erotic as they are befuddled by eroticism. At times, Chloe almost feels like a late-night flick on Cinemax. It is visually polished and sexually charged, and yet Egoyan is always toying with these stylistic associations and co-opting them for his purpose. The characters float through highly-designed spaces to a soundtrack of light, tinkly jazz and smarmy adult conversations. The world is so measured and clean we don’t expect such starkly human characters to exist within it.
Egoyan sees our sex-obsession as a symptom of an existential boredom, and yet he doesn’t wield this as a condemnation. He is a tremendously empathic filmmaker, one that exists on the opposite end of the sexual question to someone like Paul Schrader (Auto Focus) whose treatment of sexuality betrays a puritanical strain and emphasis on violence. And this is what sets Egoyan apart: sex is our indulgence and excess, but it is also our great connection to our real selves. As much as we try to peddle, objectify, and control our sexuality, drowning our drive in fetish and indulgence, its mysterious nature comes roaring back, forcing us to confront our loneliness and deep need.
