First Look: Chloe

We received this exclusive clip from Atom Egoyan’s Chloe, premiering at TIFF this week. Shot in Toronto, it already arrives at TIFF with a home court advantage, but that’s just icing on the cake of the buzz already building for the film — and especially the performances from Amanda Seyfried and Julianne Moore:

It’s a twisty meditation on desire, repression, sexuality, infidelity and commitment in a cold climate – but the look, pacing and tone owe more to Brian De Palma and Adrian Lyne than Bergman, say, or Antonioni. Julianne Moore is fine (and courageous) as the big-buck Yorkville gynecologist who, convinced that her husband (Liam Neeson), a charismatic, much-travelled university music professor, is fiddling about, hires a gorgeous escort (Amanda Seyfried, of Mamma Mia! fame) to test his loyalty. A sleek film of alluring – and dangerous – surfaces (check out all the glass and mirrors), Chloe should restore Egoyan’s lustre at the box-office. (The Globe & Mail)
Continuing his career-long examination of sexual taboos and miscommunication, [Atom Egoyan] has made a movie that is part sexual Scheherazade, part Single White Female, but is also his most straightforward movie in years. Starring Amanda Seyfried as an escort hired by Catherine (Julianne Moore) to test her husband’s (Liam Neeson) fidelity, it’s a steamy thriller the director calls “an extreme examination of how to re-eroticize a marriage.” (Edmonton metronews)
The film has that lush, romantic, other-worldly feel of most of Egoyan’s work. And he stays true to his habit of taking us to places where life becomes uncomfortably complicated. There are twists and turns everywhere, and the sex, because with a young prostitute at the center of the story you know there will be sex, is like the streets of the town, and the wistful loss of a marriage, as beautiful as it is chilling to watch. (Betsy Sharkey, LA Times blog)

Chloe (**** four stars) Three‚Ä® pitch-perfect performances make it remarkable to watch how messy three lives‚Ä® can become. And Toronto never looked so good. (The National Post)
Exploring the city landscape in the same erotic manner that the characters explore one another’s bodies, Egoyan turns Chloe into an unsettling yet courageous homage to Toronto. At the same time, this is a universal story of secrets, lies and impossible love. (Toronto Sun)