Chloe

About ten minutes into watching the movie, Chloe, I was convinced it was an adaptation of some French movie about marital infidelity. How could it not be: A woman, who suspects that her husband of cheating, hires a call girl named Chloe to seduce him, to see whether he could resist the charms of a beautiful young woman.

The story starts well: Chloe offers her client a play-by-play of the encounters with the husband that are so explicit, you wonder whether Chloe is embellishing for the benefit of her client. I started reading into every detail, from Chloe’s designer wardrobe to the movie’s sleek architecture and interiors. The marital home in the movie, for instance, looked like one of those sterile, hotel lobby-inspired interiors often featured design magazines. I was convinced that this was in contrast to the Haussmann-style, ornate Paris apartment that the married couple in the French movie might have occupied.

Toward the latter part of the story, the film takes a wrong turn and ends up with some arbitrary action-movie sequence. My husband thought that not only was the the ending plausible but that whatever happened after the we solved the puzzle was irrelevant. To me, however, the ending seemed either like an easy way out of a story that had run its course, or a last-minute rewrite to please audiences who need their stories to end with a big boss fight. I felt, dare I say, cheated.

In the closing credits, I read that Chloe was based on the French film Nathalie, directed by Anne Fontaine. I was right! Ironically, about a month earlier, I passed over Nathalie from my Netflix suggestions because the picture of Emmanuelle Beart riding a stripper pole was off putting. Now I can’t wait to watch Nathalie it to see how it compares to Chloe.

Getting ready for Halloween

 

Something scary?

Elementary School

When did this happen? Tiggy’s in kindergarten and I’m a PTA member. At the recent back-to-school barbeque at Tiggy’s elementary school, it finally registered that the picnic’s over for us.