After a kind of so-so entry with Adoration, Atom Egoyen returns to form with Chloe and that’s despite the fact that this is perhaps his most mainstream and most Hollywood that the Canadian filmmaker has gotten. For an added level of paradox, it’s also a film where Toronto gets to play Toronto complete with frequent drive bys of TTC street cars and the appearance of the ubiquitous orange and green of Beck Taxi. The film itself, based on a French film called Nathalie by Anne Fontaine, is a mix of family drama and erotic thriller that deals with attraction, infidelity, commitment and naturally sex. Egoyen keeps you guessing as to who’s zooming who, and excellent performances lead the way.

Julianne Moore and Liam Neason play married professionals living in Toronto; David is a professor and Catherine is a gynaecologist. They live a comfortable life in a nice home with their teenage son Michael (Max Thieriot), but the romantic tension between the two seems long gone and has since been replaced with the comfort of routine. Catherine begins to suspect that David is having dalliances, and decides to test her theory after a chance meeting with Chloe (Amanda Seyfried), a high end call girl who she hires to tempt her husband. In the process of tempting David with a mistress though, Catherine finds herself drawn to Chloe in what ends up being one of the most incestuous extra marital in the annals of fiction.

But Egoyen takes his time getting there and he doesn’t make it as clear as you might think. I had never seen Nathalie so I had no idea where the story was going. When Catherine gives in to Chloe’s temptation, any and all expectations as to where the story is going are thrown off track. The story is almost a sexual whodunit you realize by the tiem that the film reaches its end, who did what to whom and why? None of the three characters are what they seem, and actions in the earlier parts of the movie can be re-seen in new light on a second viewing. Trust, suspicion, paranoia and lies are all popular themes in Egoyen’s work and he expertly plays with all these things again in Chloe.

The three leads are wonderful, but it’s hard to say who had the biggest chores on this movie. Neeson had to play innocent and make you question whether or not he was. He’s kind of cool to his wife, and he senses their distance, but outside the immediate marriage he is rather warm and charming. Moore has to play against cliché as the (potentially) scorned wife, and she projects a great strength in her character as she tries to reclaim the marital high ground, only to get caught surprised by her desires and even more so by her willingness to reciprocate. But perhaps Seyfried has the toughest job of all: trying to find that middle area between raw, human emotion and Fatal Attraction. She does pretty well, but one could see the bunnies boiling in the film’s climax.

Overall, Chloe is compelling, even if the ending seems a little too pat despite the emotional entanglements throughout the rest of the film. Does the family find a good equilibrium in the end that allows them to find peace and love amongst each other again, or is there something in the smiles that says that maybe this is all a show? This will depend on the interpretation of the viewer of course, but what is undeniable is the filmmaker’s skill in weaving deep-seeded questions of personality and motivation into something that could have easily become Movie-of-the-Week melodrama. And for pure titillation, I know that Megan Fox’s make-out session with Seyfried in Jennifer’s Body is getting a lot of buzz for its gratuitous sexiness, but it can’t compare to the electricity between Seyfield and Moore during their love scene in Chloe. Out sexying Megan Fox? Now that’s the Atom Egoyen we all sing about around the water cooler.