The recent film Chloe gets the Rumpus Original Combo treatment today, with a review and an interview from two different contributors. Details after the jump.
Usually when two writers contribute to an Original Combo, their take on the subject is largely similar. What I love about this particular Combo is the way these two writers, Larry Fahey and Jeffrey Edalatpour, appear to disagree quite sharply about the worthiness of the film. Where Larry finds it to be an exasperating almost-great film — and his review entertainingly mocks the film’s most conventional aspects and (as it seems to him) its heavy-handed ending — Jeffrey, in his interview with director Atom Egoyan, makes little of these weaknesses and much of the film’s strengths: chiefly Julianne Moore’s fine performance in a challenging role, and the film’s most characteristically Egoyanesque theme, the construction (and deconstruction) of identity by means of layers of narrative.
The conversation with Egoyan is highly interesting and wide-ranging, and the two discuss such subjects as Julianne Moore’s career, Egoyan’s perspective on her role, the relationship between this film and the one it was based upon, as well as Pasolini’s Teorema (1968), and a passage in Egoyan’s adolescence that, he says, may well explain a lot of his movies. But fair warning: the piece does contain a few mild spoilers that were avoided in the review.
Enjoy!
The Rumpus Review of Chloe, by Larry Fahey
The Rumpus Interview with Atom Egoyan: Chloe, by Jeffrey Edalatpour
