Chloe

Directed by Atom Egoyan

(R)

**

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Chloe “raises intriguing questions, but discards them in the tawdry pursuit of cheap thrills,” said Keith Phipps in the A.V. Club. In this sexually charged melodrama, a distrustful wife (Julianne Moore) believes her husband (Liam Neeson) is cheating and hires a high-class call girl named Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) to confirm her suspicions. Screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson, known for the sadistic, spank-happy Secretary, gives director Atom Egoyan a script that appears “rich in enigma.” But as the plot gets more perverse, the film goes from being one kind of late-night cable movie to another, said Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. Chloe is a remake of the 2003 French film Nathalie…, but what played as erotic and intelligent in the original just comes off as seedy here. Egoyan’s take is “little more than a messy affair with mood lighting, sexy lingerie,” and heavy breathing. He tries hard to seduce us, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. His cast turns up the heat, and his camera movements are “as smooth as practiced pickup lines.” But you’ll leave the theater feeling “kind of cheap.”