Chloe.

It is finally here, the second joint review! We learnt a few things since the last we did this, so hopefully this is improved over the last one. Enjoy! Remember I am I am joined by the lovely Rosie Baillie - you can check out her stuff here and the brilliant Jon Linnell - you can check out his stuff here.

Chloe is an American remake of a French movie I have never seen. It is probably a film we should perhaps watch later in the future to do a comparison of but for now, we can't compare this to the French original because we have never seen it, we can only comment on how well it works as a piece of entertainment, which is probably for the best.

It is a story of a prostitute, a man who is possibly cheating and a gynaecologist. Catherine, Moore's character, seemingly bumps into Seyfried's prostitute character Chloe by accident while suffering an oddcase of insecurity after she sees a text on her husband, Neeson's, phone from a woman named 'Miranda'. We are left to assume, this was a student he is sleeping with. Moore then uses Chloe's help to find out if her husband really is cheating. With their lives intertwined, their lives are changed forever. And ultimately is a story of love, death and getting old. There are a few twists along the way, but they should have been obvious from the start. It's a fucked up film, in an unconventional way.

Once again I'll give you Rosie's opinion first, then Jon's, then we can close on mine:

I was underwhelmed by Chloe to say the least.

There was an awful lot of a lot of filler and what little plot there was, was pretty naff.

For me the most exciting part of the film was when I thought Chloe was going to slash Catherine's throat with a hair pin. Alas, no such thing happened and I returned to wondering when things might get exciting.

The film may as well have ended with Catherine waking up and realising it was all a dream as Chloe hadn't been sleeping with her husband, she was making it all up to get in her panties.
To be honest, that made me want to turn it off, I felt like the film was slapping me in the face going "Haha, you've just wasted the best part of two hours".

I can't say that I've seen much erotica, so pardon moi if I have the wrong end of the stick here. There was very little that was erotic about this film, other than a lesbian sex scene which was little more than you could watch on Channel 5 after 11PM.

I really really need to point out, while it has nothing to do with the quality of the film, the house the main characters lived in looked bloody awful and it drove me nuts. That's right, the architecture bothered me.
The outside was shocking, inside not so bad. Clearly the house had some serious structural issues as a minor push led to Chloe falling into the window and take the window FRAME with her!

Do I recommend this? I recommend watching this in the same way I recommend drinking from an Ebola filled lake.

And Jon thought:

I began watching Chloe expecting a sickly-sweet tastelessly-filmed erotic drama reminiscent of the spate of such films oozing from the 1990s. Fortunately, my grim premonition proved to be almost entirely false.

While Chloe is rather formulaic in terms of its story, it's redeemed entirely by several elements, most notably the remarkable performance by Amanda Seyfried - as the titular character - whose presence commandeers the film.

The direction is very good, the camera work is refreshingly minimal and the visual atmosphere of the film is generally very well-crafted and enjoyable.

A predictable narrative is fine as long as it works, which is certainly the case in Chloe. In short, I remained interested throughout (helped, perhaps, by the frequent nudity,) and I would certainly recommend it as a tale of sexual thrill and drama.

And what did I think?

Bare boobies within the opening few moments? Hell yeah, this film is gonna be awesome! Although it is Amanda Seyfried, who I have a hard time deciphering if she looks akin to ET in a wig or is absolutely gorgeous. Seyfried the alien and an aged Moore aside, this film still manages to be extremely sexy. Moore has HUGE nipples! And eventually they even get it on, aw yeah.

The film is well put together, drawing a comparison to Amanda Seyfried, the prostitute and Julianne Moore, the gynaecologist and the 'clients' they both have, then mixing Neeson's character in with prostitutes as well, using visual metaphors to tie everything together. And this is contiuned throughout, imagery connected together to convey more meaning than words can. It works so well, as a film. Even when stories are told, they are shown, I'm glad the fact that as a film, it is used to its full potential.

The film is helped by being backed by such a great cast. I really didn't like Neeson for a long time, he seemed awfully typecast for the most part and his monotone voice droned on and on but the more I see him in, the more I can't help but be charmed by him, which is a major part of his character here. Also Nina Dobrev, not seen her in something outside of Vampire Diaries before! And she looks damn hot in this movie. Seyfried puts on a strange, but good performance, she is almost haunting as she gets more and more sinister as the film progresses and is really just a downright weirdo.

The plot is full of contrivances and is incredibly slow moving. I remember finding myself around the half hour mark and finding that it was just starting to leave the exposition, with only an hour left of the film, that is just terrible writing. I mean the first genuine conflict comes in around the hour mark, this film didn't need to be as long as it is.

So do I recommend this? If I could sum Chloe up in one word, it'd be boring. This is an incredibly sexy film and although the plot is predictable, it is still serviceable but it's just so goddamn slow that I can't really recommend it.

Think About It!

-Locke