The casualties of love
Sony Pictures Classics, Star Tribune
Amanda Seyfried and Julianne Moore with director Atom Egoyan on the
set of "Chloe"
Director Atom Egoyan experienced some painful real-life parallels as
he explored the mysteries (and miseries) of marriage in a new erotic
thriller.
By COLIN COVERT
Last update: March 27, 2010
Atom Egoyan’s "Chloe" is a story of suspicion, deception, fixation,
rejection and violence. The Canadian director calls his film "an
erotic mystery"; while he stages bold sex scenes with Liam Neeson,
Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried, he expects viewers to respond
primarily to the psychological drama that arises among the three.
Moore plays an intimacy-starved physician who believes Neeson, her
musicologist husband, is cheating. Hiring upscale escort Seyfried to
test his fidelity, she finds herself trapped in a scheme she can no
longer control.
"Chloe," which opened Friday, represents a step into the mainstream
for the cerebral Canadian filmmaker. Egoyan, 50, has earned numerous
international honors but not much commercial success. Born in Cairo of
Armenian descent and raised in Victoria, British Columbia, Egoyan
often explores issues of alienation and identity. Those fixations add
intellectual heft to "Chloe," which might have been a "Fatal
Attraction" retread in other hands.
During a recent Minneapolis visit, Egoyan said he persuaded his cast
to sign on for a sexually charged thriller by describing it simply as
a drama. "This is the story of a marriage," he said. "Our erotic lives
are an essential part of who we are, and the erotic life of this
couple has disappeared. Julianne Advertisement Moore’s character hires
a prostitute rather than a detective to investigate her husband
because she needs to re-create the erotic image of who this man is. It
also goes into the competing fantasies these women have of who the
other might be. That makes for very interesting drama.
"Once you get over how it’s going to be choreographed and what they’re
comfortable with in terms of their own bodies, you then concentrate on
what’s going on in their heads. Nobody’s going to go see sex. They can
get that on the Internet. They’re going to see drama."
Expressing character through architecture
The couple played by Moore and Neeson live with their son in a large
ultramodern house whose open design suggests the courtyard of "Rear
Window." There seem to be more vantage points for the characters to
observe each other than common areas for them to interact.
The location was chosen to represent the family’s disconnected
emotional lives, Egoyan said: "The house suggests she’s obsessed with
order and control. She’s detached from what she’s actually feeling."
One of the concerns of the film is the fragility of family and
relationships, a concern that struck home with cruel irony during the
filming. Midway through the shoot, Neeson’s w ife, Natasha Richardson,
died after a skiing accident; after taking a hiatus to grieve, he
returned to complete his remaining scenes.
Egoyan called Neeson’s return "heroic, especially considering the
story." At the same time Egoyan, after two decades of marriage,
separated from his wife and frequent star Arsinee Khanjian. Each event
informed the way the filmmakers proceeded.
At times Egoyan wondered whether the film would be "fatally
compromised."
"I thought, ‘How do we finish this film without Liam’s scenes?’ That
was scary. It was a terrible, terrible experience, the worst thing
I’ve had to deal with professionally." As for his own marital issues,
"it was a difficult time but we’re back together and trying to make it
work.
"This was a very odd film to be making at that point of my life. I was
actually raising a lot of these issues between husband and wife as
they were being raised on set. It made it more tense. It felt very
urgent."
Each character in the film takes destructive, and ultimately
dangerous, actions out of a need for love, Egoyan said.
"I think falling in love means you think somebody is listening to your
story in a way no one has ever heard it before. And when anyone falls
deeply in love you cannot understand why the person you’re feeling
that for would not reciprocate. There just must be a point where they
understand that you are something special."
Secrets and lies
Storytelling is a key theme for Egoyan as an Armenian, whose people
suffered genocidal mass killings by the Turkish government during
World War I. Turkey has long denied the extermination campaign, and
for the director, the notion of unreliable narrators has a political
as well as personal resonance.
"Denial of historic reality is something one is always thinking
about," he said. "There are certain things in my family history that
I’ve heard different versions of, certain myths that are elaborated or
extinguished by people who are not served by those stories."
There’s also a darker chapter of personal history that explains
Egoyan’s fascination with secrets and lies. His first love was silent
about the fact that her father was abusing her.
"No one in town talked about that; there was so much denial going
on. Years after, I was very affected by that — the stories she told
me and was telling herself, reinventing history. My interpretation was
that the victim didn’t really know what was happening. There was a
confusion of love, this strange blurring between parental and romantic
love. I was fascinated to think what a victim of abuse might have to
imagine to justify what was happening to herself." It’s a theme that
crops up in Egoyan’s "The Sweet Hereafter," and again in "Chloe."
While the film climaxes in a violent confrontation, viewers shouldn’t
take the finale as a villain’s just deserts. The fallen character is a
casualty of love.
"When you fall in love, it’s mad. You feel it so strongly that you
cannot apprehend that the other person is not reciprocating. It’s so
clear what your life could be with that person and when it’s denied
you become really desperate. And you act in ways that are ill-
advised. It’s irrational. Delusional. Mad love. I’ve experienced
that. I think a lot of people have."
Colin Covert . 612-673-7186