CHLOE: NOT QUITE THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

...and not quite your average thriller either. Chloe is an "erotic thriller" (which sounds like something you'd only find in the 18 an up section of the video store) centered around a paranoid wife, Catherine, (Julianne Moore) who thinks her husband is having an affair. So, she does what any other suspicious wife would do and hires a prostitute, Amanda Seyfried as Chole, to temp her husband into infidelity. Now here's the hook; Chloe isn't the most stable woman in the world. She has issues. So of course everything spins out of control and Catherine is left holding the bag. This film is based on a french film, Nathalie, and is the first film that Atom Egoyan didn't pen. While the film has it's sensual drapery that is Egoyan's, it it obviously not his work. At it's base, the film tries to emphasize the need to connect with each other and the fine line between what is real and what is imagined. While it began as an interesting concept, I felt like the film just slightly missed the mark. The performances were solid, most notably Liam Neeson whose wife died during filming. It wasn't a terrible movie, just hard to swallow (so to speak) regarding the actions the characters took. My favorite films push the envelope of believability however this one pushed too far.