When I was a young child and first heard the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” I relentlessly zeroed in on the spectacle of the king unsuspectingly parading about proudly pantsless --and shirtless, too.
I get the same feeling every time a movie turns on a premise, or tries to pull a plot twist, so patently ludicrous that it is laughable. Why doesn’t everyone else see it?
And I’m not just talking about the folks in the audience.
Exhibit A: “Chloe,” the risible new marital drama-thriller from Canadian director Atom Egoyan (“The Sweet Hereafter”). It's an English-language remake of “Nathalie,” a 2003 French film by writer-director Anne Fontaine.
In it, a wife (Julianne Moore) hires Chloe (Amanda Seyfried), a comely young female escort, to tempt her husband (Liam Neeson), whom the wife suspects may be straying.
Uh, lady … ever hear of a private detective? It would cost less and you'd have a lower probability of someone ending up with a sexually transmitted disease.
“Chloe” is from the school one might call Cautionary Marital Tales. The most notable example would be Adrian Lyne’s 1987 “Fatal Attraction,” in which a happily married Michael Douglas cheats over a single weekend with Glenn Close, who proceeds to go psycho on him.
In 2002, the roles were reversed in “Unfaithful,” also directed by Lyne. Diane Lane’s bored suburban housewife repeatedly travels to Manhattan to heat the sheets with a French hottie (Olivier Martinez). When her husband (Richard Gere) discovers the affair and goes to the boyfriend’s loft to investigate, he accidentally kills her lover. Oops.
The “Fatal Attraction” dynamic was again recycled with decent box-office success a year ago in “Obsessed.” This time the twist was that a predatory blond (Ali Larter) relentlessly pursues a happily married black man (Idris Elba). His wife (Beyoncé) eventually shows this would-be rival what’s for in a knockdown, drag-out catfight that leaves her once-happy home literally in shambles.
What these films share is an Us (married couple) vs. Them (would-be lover) mentality. The married couples are always attractive, upper middle class, usually professionals, and live in gorgeous houses (or apartments) right out of the pages of Elle Décor. They are our aspirational selves. We don’t’ want their happy homes to be violated by some scheming hussy or bedroom-eyed Frenchman.
These stories serve as warnings against skirting marital fidelity lest you open the door for the other woman (or man) to become an obsessive nut case. No one is safe from their wrath, even a bunny.
The twist “Chloe” puts on this trope is to give it a same-sex spin. Chloe, it quickly becomes apparent -- at least to me, though other members of the audience at the screening I saw, most of them elderly, seemed puzzled right up to the end -- is fixated on the wife more than the husband. She has her own agenda, which she is relentless in pursuing.
