Atom Egoyan’s last few movies have flown under the radar. In fact, it’s been over ten years (1997’s The Sweet Hereafter) since Egoyan was as widely seen as he generally deserves. Perhaps that’s partly his own fault; his last chance for a big audience was Where the Truth Lies, in 2005, and that movie wasn’t very good at all.
So the fact that he’s cast the young Max Thieriot in Chloe, a remake of the 2003 French film Nathalie…, is a good chance to point out the rest of the cast, which we haven’t yet covered. Egoyan always has an eye for interesting talent, but he’s got big names this time out: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried.
Neeson and Moore are a cold and bored middle-class couple; in the original he’s a business exec and she’s a gynecologist. Moore believes that Neeson is having an affair, and hires a prostitute (Seyfried) to seduce him and provide details of his infidelity, including all of his sexual preferences.
Egoyan loves hidden lives and revelations; he’s like Claude Chabrol with a tiny bit of Haneke thrown in. All of which might mean nothing, so I’ll re-emphasize this: Amanda Seyfried is playing a prostitute who seduces Liam Neeson. I’m ready to see that.