Chloe

The basic conceit behind "Chloe" isn't all that original.  Catherine (Julianne Moore) thinks that her husband David (Liam Neeson) is cheating on her.  She has reason to think this after David blows off a flight from New York back to Toronto for his surprise birthday party and the next morning Catherine sees a message on his phone from an attractive young student signed "XXOO" which of course means hugs and kisses.  Instead of just confronting him about the phone message, Catherine decides to set a trap for David and catch him in the act.  She meets a prostitute named Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) in the bathroom of a hotel and sees her later on the street.  Eventually she hires Chloe to seduce David and thus get the goods on him.  This concept is so shopworn that it was used last year in the Mike Judge comedy "Extract."

If that's where the movie had stayed it probably would have been pretty dull.  Instead, Catherine gets a lot more than she bargained for in Chloe.  As Chloe tells her about the various things she's doing with David, Catherine finds herself getting turned on and maybe wanting Chloe to do a few of these things to her as well.  And Chloe is more than willing to do this.  So the story becomes about this bizarre relationship between Catherine, Chloe, and Chloe's family.

There's of course a surprise twist at the end that changes everything.  I won't ruin that.  I thought overall this was a very taut thriller and I couldn't exactly see what was coming before it happened, which is always a good thing for a suspense movie.  And to put on my sexist male hat for a moment, it has one of the hottest girl-on-girl scenes in a non-porn movie since "Mulholland Drive."  (Yeah, really, crucify me for enjoying that.)

Overall, a riveting story with great actors and some steamy love scenes.  If you're an adult, what's not to like?  (And the band Chloe mentions, Raised by Swans, is good too.  I actually bought an album off Amazon and liked it.  So there you go.)

That is all.

My score:  75/100 (3 stars)
Metacritic score:  48/100 (2 stars)