Been thinking since i saw this film. Was chloe's intention to make the wife realise the husband was actually faithful and she had been lying the whole film and make her realise how lucky she was to have a marriage and to save it?
La Semilla del Diablo...
It was Chloe's mission to bring love back into Catherine's life.
If you think that love was David's, you didn't watch the end carefully. David and Catherine are on opposite sides of the room; when they look at each other, David's smile fades; the distance between them is never crossed, and Catherine turns her back on him. This is not the body language of a couple whose marriage has been revitalized!
Catherine is wearing Chloe's hairpin, no woman would wear the gift from her lover in front of the husband that she wants to reconcile with. Catherine told David about Chloe, and Michael saw the confrontation between Chloe and his mother, the police investigated -- David must know about the hairpin. Catherine also wears a black bow -- a sign of mourning for Chloe.
P. A. T. (Needy's Boy)
I think that Chloe was in love with Catherine in addition to having mother issues about her. When she was rejected she acted out...re the son. Maybe Katherine also was a little in love with Chloe but was in denial. In any case, I think Chloe is a borderline mental case.
sharecarboncopy2 writes:
"Maybe Katherine also was a little in love with Chloe but was in denial."
Yes. Very likely.
Also, perhaps Catherine was a bit snobbish. A bit uppity or bourgeois. We see this when she writes Chloe the check to buy her off. Catherine thinks she can just dismiss Chloe by saying it was just business -- she denies her own feelings and Chloe's too.
P. A. T. (Needy's Boy)
I'd say it's not clear, meaning after the lousy unresolving ending where Chloe unmotivatedly kills herself, the only thing that was clear was that the writers weren't even clear how to wrap up their premise. Note the two alternative endings on the DVD grasping at a retrospective exposition of Chloe's mission, none of which even account for the suicide.
share[deleted]
I say it is very clear.
In one alternate ending, Chloe keeps narrating after her death! She is not an ordinary girl. Among other things, she says that she can stay and watch over Catherine. Sounds like a guardian angel.
In the second, Catherine begins by saying "She could have saved herself, but instead, she saved me...." Sounds like a sacrifice, one dying in place of another.
This film, which is an allegory, is resolved by the symbolism it contains. Sacredness permeates this film, and especially Chloe's death scene. She suffers stigmata (the wound to her hand); she receives a Judas kiss from the person who causes her death; She is posed cross-like when she falls; and as the scene cross fades to the next, Chloe has a halo.
"I think it's time to see Amanda sticking guns in people's faces."
I see the allusions to the life of Jesus. I don't see that resolving this story, I see it running away from a story about a bunch of mortals.
sharewillywilly,
How does it not resolve the story?
The story is about Catherine's search for love. She finds love. Doesn't Catherine looked rejuvenated in the final scene? She finds a spiritual love.
It's good that you see the Christ allusions. What happens after Chloe's death? The camera returns to the bedroom in the hotel and then to the gardens. They're empty. There is no love without Chloe. And who is Chloe? She's an incarnation of Christ. And now Catherine carries Chloe in her heart. That's why Catherine wears the hairpin, which looks to me like a peacock, a symbol of the Resurrection.
If you don't like the Christian allegory, just look at the last scene and ask yourself who's closest to Catherine in it. It's Chloe: Catherine wears her hairpin. In the restaurant, Catherine put her down to be more attractive to David; now her hair is pinned up with Chloe's pin. Catherine doesn't care what David thinks anymore. Chloe was Catherine's true love.
http://www.archive.org/details/EgoyansChloeAnAllegoryOfTrueLoveAndDivi neLight
The film is entitled Chloe, not “David.”
"I think it's time to see Amanda sticking guns in people's faces."
Just as pertinently, its not entitled "Jesus".
She actually carries Chloe in her HAIR because she feels sorry for her and is grateful for her inadvertent opening up and resolving of marital suspicion and doubt. Chloe brought the family back together. If you think she doesn't care about him after all that, well I find that plain odd.
Turning a lying manipulative hooker into someone whose feelings of genuine warmth toward her clients are in the last few minutes suddenly sufficient for her to kill herself just to get out of their hair is an unsatisfactory wrap up for me.
willywilly writes:
"Just as pertinently, its not entitled 'Jesus'."
Now you're just being absurd. You said yourself that you saw the Christ allusions!
The Christ symbolism has meaning. I've tried to share with you that meaning.
Deny the significance if you want, but film is art that often speaks to us in an esoteric manner. It seems that you're caught in the exoteric or literal. Too bad.
"I think it's time to see Amanda sticking guns in people's faces."
"Turning a lying manipulative hooker into someone whose feelings of genuine warmth toward her clients are in the last few minutes suddenly sufficient for her to kill herself just to get out of their hair is an unsatisfactory wrap up for me."
I thought the whole film set up Chloe's love for Catherine. From the bathroom scene where she tries to give Catherine the hair ornament to the end of the movie. She takes Catherine's offer because she wants to be around Catherine and in my opinion, sets up dates to tell her stores just to be around Catherine.
So when Catherine gets what she wants and cuts her out, Chloe gets obsessed and sure that Catherine feels what she does, which I feel she does...Catherine is wearing the hair ornament at the end of the movie. I feel Catherine didn't have the strength to save Chloe or maybe though if Chloe died, her life to get back to normal, which i feel it never did.
Chloe does have feelings for people from the beginning. When Catherine asks how she can do it, Chloe says she tries to find something lovable in every person. I don't feel Chloe chose to be a hooker, her mom threw her out of the house and she had no choice except to survive. On the other hand, a part of me thinks Chloe wasn't a hooker at all, but used Catherine's idea that she was to try to seduce her.
I feel the movie that you watched wasn't the one I watched. :) I think Chloe decided she wanted to vanish, because it was better than being rejected by another mom figure (in the extras of the DVD you will see a scene where Chloe tells Catherine that her mom gave her $400 and threw her out of the house) was too much to bare. It's a metaphor really and it works here...especially if you give the movie a second view.
Okay. I can't argue that as I won't be giving it a second view :)
shareThat's kind of how I saw it as well. Chloe has a lot of power over men. She wanted to have that sort of power over Catherine too (because her mother didn't treat her well?), but it didn't work. She couldn't handle not having power over Catherine and so childishly killed herself as a way of punishing Catherine. Two women vying for power, dominance, and control.
I honestly didn't notice the Christ symbolism. I think it's sort of odd and wonder if that was really intentional, considering the lesbian love affair and Christianity's hatred and intolerance of homosexuality. Not to mention the adultery.
I saw it this way. Catherine was unhappy with her marraige. She thought that her husband was cheating on her and she wanted to know. Then she meets Chloe. Her and Chloe talked at the bar and Chloe tells her what she does. And Catherine gets the idea of hiring Chloe to find out the truth.
And this is the change up. At that time Catherine belived that her husband was cheating on her, and she was unhappy. I belive that Chloe knew that Catherine wanted to cheat on her husband. So when Catherine was hiring Chloe for the job. Chloe knew it wasn't to find out about David was cheating on Catherine. She was being hired to have sex with Catherine.
The final clue about Catherine wanting to have sex with Chloe was when Chloe told her that they had sex. Catherine took Chloe to the hotel room and asked her to tell her how David touched her. And Catherine started to touch Chloe the way she wanted to be touched and loved.
Chloe gave Catherine what she wanted, sex with her.
"Like I know where to find people in this bum *beep* town" Jessica Hamby
Yeh Chloe's intention was definitely to be with Catherine as she connected/ was in love with her as soon as they met. I don't think Catherine loved her back at all though, and had sex with her to feel closer to her husband, as she was manipulated to think that he felt more intimate when he was with Chloe.
share^^This. Catherine didn't feel the same way about Chloe, Chloe was clearly smitten with Catherine.
"I am the ultimate badass, you do not wanna `*beep*` wit' me!" Hudson in Aliens.
In Chloe's 1st appearance, she is crying in the toilet while her client is out there. Catherine care and offered help, i believe that is when Chloe starts feeling attach to Catherine. Thus, offering her hairpin to Catherine.
In their 1st meeting, Chloe said she don't meet lone female client, Catherine is the exception.
It seems cheap that a few tissue paper can have someone so deeply attached, but what's weight the feelings down isn't the tissue, but the warmth and care she felt when she don't see a way out.
Chloe doesn't want to be a hooker, as she said at the end of the movie saying, that Micheal might be the good boy that she can starts dating. She wanted to a new life, with people who will love her.