Is Atom Egoyan’s ‘Chloe’ His Most Accessible Film Since ‘The Sweet Hereafter’?

To attend Atom Egoyan’s “Chloe” at the Toronto Int. Film Festival or not. That is the question.

Or at least one we’ve been toying with and then when we think about it for a second, we remember that Egoyan’s work in the last few years has been largely unsuccessful, cerebral to the point of alienation, or just plain obtuse and dull. Some would say the Canadian director just crawled up his own esoteric ass.

If you’re a sane person, you should rightfully adore Egoyan’s 1997 picture, “The Sweet Hereafter” which basically launched the director’s career on an international stage and earned him a Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay nomination at the Oscars that year. It’s a great picture that still holds up (and also gave the excellent Sarah Polley some international exposure), but the pickings for Egoyan films since then are slim (“Ararat” is clever, but doggedly noncommercial and was seen by virtually no one aside from Canadians and the small devotees). After “Exotica,” (the picture right before ‘Hereafter’), Hollywood came knocking and he almost directed a studio thriller called “Dead Sleep,” but he famously walked away from the project when he wasn’t allowed to cast Susan Sarandon in the lead. Tinseltown kicked themselves when ‘Hereafter’ become a huge hit. Ever since his work has been as far away as possible from L.A. even though namebrand actors like Kevin Bacon and Alison Lohman were in things like 2005’s “Where the Truth Lies.”

So forget it on “Chloe,” right? Go see something else? Maybe not, as a recent New York Times article from this weekend suggests the picture might be his most accessible since the aforementioned Oscar nominated ‘Hereafter.’

They’ve got some good evidence to back it up. Egoyan is apparently looking to try something different with more appeal and his unlikely producer Ivan Reitman, not only has a lot of experience in the commercial realm, he himself is looking to do something a bit more weighty.

“Chloe” — a picture the filmmaker calls an “erotic mystery”— is also the first film that he hasn’t written the screenplay for (those who have seen his recent pictures can attest, maybe this isn’t a bad idea).

The filmmaker suggested he’s probably due to reach a wider audience. “There’s a definite ceiling for the type of films I’ve done, and as an artist there is a point where you’re trying to find and test how wide your sensibility can go.”

Reitman also suggests the picture will be easier to swallow than recent fare. And we’re never ones to tell directors to go more commercial, but for the sake of his career, Egoyan could stand to go a little closer to the center. “I think for how good his movies are, a lot of them are hard to take,” Reitman said, adding. “The storytelling in ‘Chloe’ is faster than his historical work. But it is an Egoyan film in that it’s a very personal look at human psychology, with lots of small moments told through nuance. It’s less enigmatic.”

The film is essentially about a doctor (Julianne Moore) who hires an escort (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce her husband (Liam Neeson), whom she suspects of cheating, though unforeseen events put the family in danger. “It’s an extreme examination of how to re-eroticize a marriage,” Egoyan told the Times. Lord knows his work always has a voyeuristic, erotic nature, so perhaps the material fits him like a glove.

Of course, tragedy struck the production when Liam Neeson’s wife, Natasha Richardson passed away from a freak skiing accident in February. Apparently the film was rejiggered and upon his return, Neeson shot all his remaining scenes in two days under high emotional duress (understandably).

“He conducted himself in an extraordinary manner,” Reitman said. “He was under pressure from the sadness of what had happened, and he channeled it into the performance of those two days.”

Sad stuff. Ok, we’re mostly convinced and willing to give Egoyan another shot. Hopefully people go see the picture for the supposed qualities and performers and not because of some gross, tragedy-emotion-porn curiosity.