About twenty-five minutes into Chloe, I knew I'd seen all this before. As great as the performances are, particularly from Amanda Seyfried and Julianne Moore (always fresh no matter the role), I began to realize that I'd already seen a better version of this in a French film from 2003 called Nathalie.
Nathalie is a not-forgotten guilty pleasure of mine starring Emmanuelle Béart and Fanny Ardant. (Actually any film with Ms. Béart is somewhat a guilty pleasure of mine, not only for her standard-setting acting, but in my book, she's one of the three most beautiful women in the world.) The film was only released a few years ago but now we already have this English-language version hurled upon us. I'm mostly opposed to any remaking of films -- a film should be seen in the language and context it was intended for -- but a remake is especially bad when an unnecessary character is plucked in and a new plot seals up all the best loose ends from the original.
The last ten minutes of Chloe are simply horrible. When you've seen the original, you understand why. But if you've seen neither the original nor Chloe, I highly recommend you simply avoid Chloe altogether and rent Nathalie. For my part, I'm going to try to forget Chloe altogether. I feel like they ruined my perfectly good French guilty pleasure.
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