An average movie

Since I saw ‘Exotica' years ago, I always had a weak spot for Atom Egoyan’s work, even though, I have to admit it, I haven’t seen many of his movies. Anyway, this movie was apparently his most successful one, at least, financially speaking, and I was quite eager to check it out. As a matter of fact, it was one of those remakes of a French movie which I haven’t seen yet. Anyway, unfortunately, I thought that the whole thing was eventually rather disappointing. Indeed, even if the whole thing tried to be something more, eventually, it was just another rather sleazy erotic thriller which borrowed from other movies from the same genre such as ‘Fatal Attraction’ or ‘Poison Ivy’. Let’s start with Amanda Seyfried. First of all, she should get some credit because she tried something really risky and completely different than what she had done so far but even though she did her very best, I never believed that she was a seasoned prostitute. However, Seyfried should not be the only one to be blamed as her character was actually poorly developed in my opinion. I mean, what was her motivation? Why did she suddenly make those decisions? Only because she had a nice chat with Julianne Moore in the ladies room ? It was pretty thin and eventually we never got the chance to know her. Concerning Liam Neeson, the job was even more thankless. Indeed, during the whole thing, he was described as a huge douchebag but, at the end, there was this twist which explained that we have been misled during the whole movie. I thought it was rather cheap and manipulative but that was obviously the point here but, above all, I thought it was really unbelievable that Julianne Moore, after 20 years of relationship, wouldn’t know if her man was just a flirt or always went for the 2nd base. What remains is Julianne Moore and I have to admit that, once again, she delivered a terrific performance. I did like the directing (above all this incredibly hot first scene at the very beginning which was ruined right away by some very dull voice-over) but Moore was completely convincing and made her inner struggle really fascinating to behold. Basically, she had some kind of total meltdown and Julianne Moore played it perfectly. To conclude, even though Roger Ebert was really enthusiast, I thought it was not much better than the other movies from this genre but thanks to the directing and Julianne Moore’s performance, I still think it is worth a look though.

6/10