(2009) "I can become your living, breathing, unflinching dream," Chloe Sweeney (Amanda Seyfried) narrates misleadingly at the opening, "and then I can actually disappear."

Then the point of view shifts to Dr Catherine Stewart (Julianne Moore), a gynecologist in Toronto, who after disappointment and then suspicion hires Chloe to tempt her husband, David (Liam Neeson), a professor of music (lecturing about the famous lecher Don Giovanni of opera), after he misses a flight from New York - while she has gone to much trouble and expense to have a surprise birthday party for him - and she discovers a photo on his cellphone of him with Miranda, one of his students.

The couple's son Michael (Max Thieriot), a high-school senior taking advantage of his parents' busy (but otherwise sexually stale) lives, has his girlfriend Anna sleep over in his bedroom, telling his mother (to whom he's uncommonly rude) that his father knows and approves.

Reporting on her initial encounter with David, Chloe says he was "friendly but barely flirted" with her in the Café Diplomatico. Asked how she can be what she is, she tells Catherine: "I try to find something to love in everybody."

During their second meeting, Chloe says that David took her to lunch before their going to the Allan Gardens and conservatory. Wanting to break off the covert relationship with Chloe, Catherine then hears of more lurid details of another tryst about which the covetous Chloe provides both graphic and physical demonstrations, turning business into pleasure with her client.

Based on director/writer Anne Fontaine's Nathalie, screenwriter Evin Cressida Wilson and director Atom Egoyan manage to make even more of a mess of the predictable French mystery.

Seeking (from Catherine a mother or lover?) revenge, Chloe seduces Michael (recently dumped by Anna) in the penalty box at the hockey rink. "Who is it?" demands David - admitting to making himself available to his students as a teacher they can trust and to a minor indiscretion in New York - accusing Catherine of carrying on an affair.

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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