Chloe (4 Stars)

This isn't necessarily one of my favourite films, but it's a film I keep returning to. I've watched it more often than films I rate higher. I have to ask myself if four stars is too high, because it has a cheap feeling to it, like a television movie, but it still fascinates me. It's a good story with great acting, but something about the cinematography lets it down. It's difficult for me to describe exactly what it is.

Catherine Stewart suspects her husband of having an affair, and maybe he's even had several affairs. I'll give away a spoiler: it's not true. He's been faithful all the years they were married. He flirts with other women, but it never goes past words. I can relate to that, because I see myself in him. I've always been flirtatious, even while I was married, but I still remained faithful.

Catherine hires Chloe, a beautiful young call girl, to test her husband. She asks Chloe to meet her husband and seduce him. That's a dangerous game. Chloe is being paid to succeed, so she'll do anything within her power to get him into bed. Could any man resist temptation like that, especially when the girl is as sexy as Amanda Seyfried?

Here's a small anecdote. In the 1980's the British army hired three girls to test the security at military bases, in Britain and Germany. The idea was that they should try to seduce the security guard to leave his post. Any guard who failed the test would be court-martialled. What the army didn't reckon with is that the girls treated it as a competition. They kept in contact with one another, comparing their results. The girl who won the competition had a 100% success rate. Was it a fair test? No, the guards were set up to fail, but it could just as well have been Russian spies trying to break into a base.

Back to the film: what Catherine didn't expect is that Chloe has her own agenda. She's not satisfied with just doing her job; she also seduces Catherine herself and Catherine's teenage son. She takes over the family.

This film is included with Amazon Prime, but I strongly recommend that you watch it on DVD or Blu-ray. The discs include two alternative endings. They're both better than the ending in the film. They're not really alternatives. To understand the film's message you have to watch both of them. I can imagine what happened. The director filmed both endings, and he couldn't decide which one to use, so he used neither. They should both have been used, even if it meant restructuring the film. One of the endings could have been slightly refilmed and put into a mid-credits sequence. There has to be a way this could have been done better. As it is, you need to watch both alternative endings after watching the film. If you don't do that, you'll miss out.

Success Rate:  - 0.9

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Sadly, this film has only been released on DVD in the UK. If you want to watch it on Blu-ray, buy the German release.