THE DEADLY ATTRACTION | CHLOE & CATHERINE — CHLOE (2009)
WHEN THE WOMAN YOU HIRE TO TEST YOUR MARRIAGE BECOMES THE ONE YOU CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT.
Let’s talk about Chloe and Catherine.
Catherine hires Chloe for one very specific reason.
She wants to know whether her husband will cheat.
Simple enough.
Except Chloe quickly becomes far more interesting than the answer to Catherine’s question.
Their meetings begin as transactions. Chloe reports back, describing increasingly intimate encounters with David, and Catherine keeps listening. What she doesn’t know yet is that those stories are fantasies, carefully constructed by Chloe around the desires and insecurities Catherine is revealing every time she asks for more.
And somewhere along the way, jealousy becomes curiosity.
Curiosity becomes desire.
Then Chloe stops describing intimacy and gives Catherine the real thing.
Julianne Moore plays Catherine as a woman simultaneously frightened and fascinated by what Chloe awakens in her, while Amanda Seyfried makes Chloe almost impossible to read. Seduction is part of her profession, but what develops with Catherine stops feeling professional to Chloe very quickly.
That difference matters.
Catherine can retreat afterwards, call what happened a transaction and return to the marriage she was trying to protect.
Chloe cannot.
For her, Catherine has become real. When Catherine tries to shut the door, Chloe pushes further into her life, until attraction has turned into fixation and the fantasy Catherine originally paid her to create begins consuming everyone around them.
And even after everything ends, Catherine wearing Chloe’s hairpin leaves one final trace of a relationship she tried so desperately to contain.
Some deadly attractions destroy themselves before they can become love.
Others become dangerous because one person believes they already have.
Chloe and Catherine?
Catherine hired Chloe to expose a betrayal. Instead, Chloe exposed a desire neither of them knew how to leave untouched.