Julianne Moore and director Atom Egoyan reflect on the premiere of their new film, the erotic thriller Chloe. By Ben Kenigsberg
 

 It’s hard not to feel a bit out of place at the Toronto International Film Festival world premiere of Chloe – a Canadian-produced new movie by one of Canada’s most prominent filmmakers, introduced by a series of Canadians effusive about the fact that the film was shot in Toronto, for once ostentatiously playing itself.

Then again, the movie is something of a departure for anyone familiar with director Atom Egoyan’s work: For one thing, it’s a remake, of Anne Fontaine’s art-house drama Nathalie (2003), and it’s scripted not by Egoyan but Secretary’s Erin Cressida Wilson. It’s cast with movie stars (Julianne Moore, Amanda Seyfried, Liam Neeson) and unfolds in chronological order, which for an Egoyan movie is virtually unheard-of. In many ways, it’s his attempt at a mainstream thriller in the vein of Fatal Attraction.

Coupled with Egoyan’s somewhat underrated Where the Truth Lies (2005), Chloe suggests that the idiosyncratic director of Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter may be venturing toward more commercial fare. But he doesn’t see it that way. “I think this one is linear and so you’re able to follow it in a different way, and so your relationship with it, as a viewer, is very different, but I think in terms of the psychology of the piece, it’s as complex as anything I’ve done,” he says the morning after the premiere.

Sitting with Moore – it’s their first time doing an interview together, and Moore reminds Egoyan that they first met at TIFF in the ’90s – the director and his star explain that what attracted them to the material was the main character’s behaviour. The protagonist thinks she’s taking control of a situation, when in fact she’s always one step behind those around her.

“I think that one of the things that Atom plays with a lot in his films is this notion of what is perception and what is real,” Moore says. The sun is to her back, which makes her literally blinding to look at. “The fact of the matter is that it doesn’t really matter to any human being whether or not anything is real. What we perceive is real to us. If a person comes to a room and claims to have seen a ghost, you say to them, ‘Ghosts don’t exist.’ They say, ‘I just saw one.’ Then who’s right? In their life, that’s what they saw.”

Suspecting her husband (Neeson) of infidelity, Moore’s character, an obstetrician, hires a prostitute (Seyfried) to seduce him and then report back on what happens. As the charade goes on, the women’s relationship takes unexpected turns (more so in Chloe than in Nathalie), and the film grows less classifiable as it goes along.

The difficulty of pinning down the main character is part of what attracted Moore to the project. “I’m not as much drawn to movies about people who’ve achieved great things or made the first airplane,” she says. “There’s all that stuff out there and it’s very entertaining, but for one reason or another, psychological drama has always been most compelling to me.”

Egoyan had seen and liked Nathalie, but it never occurred to him to remake it, and he views the new film as a fascinating study in what happens when you keep the same basic plotline but tell a story in a different style (if that’s what Chloe does). For the moment, at least, he’s enjoying the pleasures of having crafted a mostly mainstream thriller. “Last night there were these moments where – in intimate, dramatic scenes – there was a gasp, and that was great,” Egoyan says. “That’s rare for a film I make, so I enjoyed doing this.… I think Hollywood scripts, it’s just they’ve never really fit.”

Chloe opens June 24.