I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch this film, so I delayed as much as possible but finally I succumbed as is an Atom Egoyan film and had to watch. The good news is that visually the film has many good moments with excellent cinematography and some outstanding outdoor compositions. The bad news is that the original story was changed to make it the most awful story you can image, chemistry between main leads (Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried) was non-existent and after watching I was mad!
Remakes are most of the time awful as many times the story is changed to accommodate the morality codes of the target audience. If something I was really curious about this movie was how they were going to adapt Nathalie's very peculiar story that for me totally reflects France's morality values that are SO different to values in English speaking countries. Well, just let me tell you that the main character becomes a stalker of the worst kind, which in the original story is very-very far from it.
Yes this film is the very bad remake of Anne Fontaine's Natalie. Bad because so many things that include the awful story changes but also -for example- Nathalie was all about voices and was really erotic, Chloe tries too hard to be erotic and becomes vulgar.
If you haven't seen Nathalie I urge you to go and buy/rent the DVD so you can see the abysmal difference from Chloe. Would I have liked the movie if I haven't seen Fointaine's film? Visually yes; the story, no.
Definitively Atom Egoyan should avoid doing mainstream films, he's an excellent director that wasted his time with a terrible screenplay.
If you saw and loved Nathalie as much as I did, I suggest you stay away from this movie as I'm sure you will get upset with the old-fashion portrait of lesbianism in this film.
Sigh.
Watch trailer @ Movie On Companion