GRADE: C+

It always amazes me when directors—especially good directors—manage to make sex boring. But that’s the result for the usually creative and dependable Atom Egoyan, who’s latest cinematic rumination on obsession is little more than soft-core escapism sprinkled with a dash of intellectualism to give it the appearance of substantive drama.

Based on the 2003 French film, Nathalie: Une Liaison Pornographique, Egoyan’s Chloe features a pair of fine leading performers (Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore) who are given little to work with despite the presence of no less than four screenwriters, proving once again more is not necessarily better.

The tired story revolves around a middle-aged couple, David and Catherine, whose marriage is not what it once was and whose sex life has severely dwindled. He’s a professor of music who travels a lot; she’s a gynecologist. (Why can’t these couples ever have “normal” jobs in the movies, like working for K-Mart or being a teacher or a nurse? Why are they almost always high-powered professionals when it involves stories like this?)

One day Catherine discovers a message on David’s cell phone from one of his students thanking him for “a good time.” That innocuous text fuels Catherine’s suspicions over David’s fidelity, leading her to conclude he’s probably been unfaithful with other women as well.

To confirm her fears, Catherine enlists the aid of a young prostitute named Chloe to test her husband’s intentions. That rendezvous apparently yields results, which Chloe graphically recounts to Catherine when they meet several days later. This pattern ensues for a number of days (or weeks, Egoyan and his four screenwriters never manage to make the timeline or much else very clear) over which Chloe continues to meet with David and to feed the sorted details of their trysts to Catherine.

Egoyan must have thought that at this point viewers would be intrigued with the question of where this triangle is headed, which turns out to be something along the lines of a faux Fatal Attraction-like climax. But that climax falls flat, in great part because the character of Chloe is so poorly drawn and barely fleshed out, leaving viewers to guess at her motivations and ultimate objective.

The other big payoffs in Chloe—one involving Catherine; one concerning David—also come across as muted because there’s just not enough substance preceding the revelations to give either moment that OMG quality, making the drama shallow and the thriller aspects far too tepid.

Whether or not you’ll actually care about where all this leads probably depends on whether or not you’ll be satiated with the likes of Moore’s naked body and the revealing (pun intended!) performance of Amanda Seyfried as Chloe. It might be just as titillating, however, for women to catch a re-run of Dr. Phil while their husbands dig around in the basements for an old copy of Penthouse.

#