Saturday, March 3, 2018

Cold Takes: Chloe

Hi internet,

Cat here. I watched another movie.

Streaming Service: Chloe was on Netflix but it was about to expire so it was a now or never kind of thing for me.

Temperature: Chilled. This movie came out in 2009. I remember reading a positive Roger Ebert review at the time. Spoiler: I did not see what he apparently saw in it.

WARNING: Spoilers for Chloe

What can I say? I have a certain affinity for bad movies. I'm one of those people who likes referencing Showgirls. I thought this movie was very middle of the road. As a philosophical drama musing on marriage and womanhood and people, I thought it was mostly a failure. There are a couple of okay monologues saved by the queen, Julianne Moore, but that's about it. As a trashy, scandalous addition to the canon of crazy stalkers (who these days are mostly relegated to Lifetime movies) I also found it to be a disappointment. You get to see Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried naked if you're into that but this movie's project isn't even really the objectification of female bodies.


The beginning of the movie is rather odd. It sort of gestures at objectification and a voyeur-like perspective but there are racier shots in commercials. Mostly I just focused on the fact that Amanda Seyfried, who plays Chloe, does not have the right voice for voiceovers. She seemed very miscast in this movie. She is very pretty and the camera loved her blonde hair but aside from making use of her large, teary eyes in a few scenes, she didn't make much sense as Chloe. She wasn't much of a seductress or the chameleon the opening voiceover implies that she is. Instead, her performance and the bad writing gives it away almost immediately (for me I was certain around the 30 minute mark) that she's just lying to Catherine (Julianne Moore).

In order to sell this plot, David (Liam Neeson) is inexplicably a jerk to his wife. He flirts with every woman he sees and he acts distant when he's around Catherine. Still, Seyfried is so obvious and the writing they give her when Chloe feeds into Catherine's neuroses and insecurities by spinning fantasies about seducing David is so bad that you know he's not cheating on Catherine. I mean, seriously, WTF was with that garden nonsense? I'm very cynical about men and even I didn't buy a word of that. It's amazing that Catherine does, given that she actually knows David and none of this behavior sounds like it's natural for a human, let alone his character as its been established.

The fact that Chloe doesn't make any effort to be believable implies that this is all about Catherine's issues. And to an extent it is. Catherine is already spying on Chloe from her office window before she even suspects David is cheating on her. If you pick up on the fact that Chloe is obviously lying then you can watch the movie as Chloe's seduction of Catherine through her insecurities and latent desires. (Though, before you assume that this movie is about Catherine's unacknowledged lesbianism or bisexuality, it's not. Though itt's oddly casual about nonheterosexual desire in that nobody makes a big deal about it, neither is the movie about Catherine secretly wanting to be with a woman while being trapped in a heterosexual marriage.) Catherine should be able to see through Chloe from the start. Aside from the incredibly bad account of the garden encounter, Chloe is textbook Single White Female-ing. She falls off her bike and later pretends to have a cold to appeal to Catherine's nurturing instincts as a doctor and as a mother whose son is rejecting her attention and parenting. Chloe randomly kisses her after telling her she slept with David. Chloe emails her a photo of them in bed together the night after she finally seduces Catherine. Catherine finds Chloe in bed with her son. Throughout all of this, Catherine's dialogue does not imply that she thinks Chloe is insane or disturbed. WHICH IS CRAZY. Instead she says things like it's her fault for inviting Chloe into her marriage and that she shouldn't have led her on.

The movie doesn't seem to have a clear sense of what it's trying to do. On the one hand, Chloe seems like a device for Catherine to work out her issues in her marriage to David and her anxieties about aging and desire. This reading gels with how unbelievable Chloe's lies are and the way Catherine keeps getting sucked back in spite of it. It also fits with the way Catherine sought her out in the first place and how Chloe sacrifices herself at the end of the movie instead of putting up a fight. She's just a plot device contrived to let Catherine explore her issues, right? It's not ideal storytelling but at least it's understandable. With this reading, the movie is almost like Afternoon Delight (2013) but with more salacious elements.

Well, that doesn't fit with the crazy stalker narrative where Chloe does make an effort to keep drawing Catherine in. Chloe has a tremendous amount of agency and, even if it's contrived, she does manage to manipulate Catherine. As noted, the movie does not seem to be about Catherine's unacknowledged desire for a woman. While her interactions with Chloe eventually lead her to being honest with David, this isn't something she's pursuing herself. Chloe is the one who can't let go. Until she does (literally) for... reasons.

I cannot believe this movie was written by a woman.

CONCLUSION: Maybe use one of the Julianne Moore speeches if you need a short acting monologue. Otherwise, watch Afternoon Delight (2013). It's not perfect but it's a better, more thoughtful movie.

And now for some other flaws in the movie... 

  • The music cues are overly dramatic when nothing is happening. I've heard worse but this wasn't great. 
  • It's weird that everything is so convenient. Why was Catherine spying on Chloe at the start of the movie? Is it just that she's beautiful (as the character repeatedly says)? 
  • Also, when she goes to the bar to hire Chloe, they've met in the bathroom of a different restaurant. That's been their one interaction. When Catherine sits at the bar, how does Chloe know that she's there to see her?
  • Seriously, why is Catherine completely unable to discipline her son? He brings a girl home and they have sex in his room and she's completely powerless in this interaction because he closes the door? What? 
  • I don't care if he's a hormonal teenage boy. It is bonkers that the son doesn't think any of Chloe's behavior is weird. He meets her as a patient of his mom. She follows him to the copy room and starts asking him about himself. Then she shows up at what I assume is his school some time later when he's at hockey practice with a CD. What the actual fuck? Then she shows up at his house in the middle of the night and he invites her in and they have sex in his parents' bed. I can't. They imply that he's had some mental health issues but come on. I know she's young and pretty but you're not the slightest bit suspicious about this predatory behavior? 
  • The movie gestures vaguely at making a comment on sex workers and whether paying someone is enough to treat the person as disposable and ignore the emotional consequences. Except it does it very badly and never completes what it's trying to say so it's basically pointless.
  • When Chloe finally turns violent, her weapon of choice is a very symbolic hairpin (It's large like a hair stick but it has two prongs). I get that it's a SYMBOL but on the list of threatening weapons it is very low. I don't know why Catherine doesn't just overpower her if the only thing she has to threaten her with is basically a two-pronged stabbing device. It's not even a knife. It's like a letter opener.