‘Chloe’ by Atom Egoyan: Architecture porn? “Stinker”? Faux–“erotic thriller”?
March 29, 2010 9:33 AM Subscribe
“
Toronto Critics Praise Egoyan Stinker” blares the headline at Onion manqué URNews. They’re talking about
Chloe (
IMDB;
official site), the new film by Canadian cinéaste Atom Egoyan that
opened on 2,400 fewer U.S. screens than Hot Tub Time Machine. Critics are focussing on how Toronto
plays itself for once – in the
Globe and Mail, the irascible Liam Lacey
panned the picture, then
talked mostly about buildings and settings. Architecture porn... or
lesbian porn? “
Chloe turns from quiet family drama to loudly awful erotic thriller” is one gloss, but let’s let Choire Sicha
adjudicate: “There is no less crude way to put this. Julianne Moore can act with her bosom.… The movie of course ends in absolute hysterics. Charles Busch couldn’t have plotted it better were he writing a sequel to
Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.”
And what
about that frosty,
Unhappy Hipsters–compliant
Modernist house Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson live in? In a dizzying case of recursion, Egoyan
told the bible of the “dumb rich,”
Toronto Life: “Funny you should ask. I first saw it in
Toronto Life and then tracked it down. It’s near St. Clair and Bathurst. It’s a very modern, signature Toronto style, with all the wood and glass. Thematically, I liked that the huge windows made it transparent.”
posted by brain_drain at 9:35 AM on March 29, 2010 [17 favorites]