Chloe

The necessities of the thriller genre demand that Chloe remains a mystery, even after the film ends. It's unfortunate, because like a lot of thrillers the plot hangs together by threads and really the central conceit is ridiculous when you take a step back and think about it. Julianne Moore starts to suspect that her husband Liam Neeson is having an affair, and (very randomly) finds a sex worker played by Amanda Seyfried to try and seduce him in order to prove to herself that he is a serial philanderer. But Chloe turns out to be very capable at seduction, and is ultimately more interested in Julianne Moore than anyone could have guessed.

But why? Egoyan's Exotica proved that the filmmaker has an interest in the strange things broken people do in order to put themselves back together again. And it feels like Chloe is one of these people. We only get inside her head at the beginning of the film, through voiceover, where we're told of her awesome powers of knowing exactly what people want, and giving it to them. What's left is a hole which Chloe seeks to fill by ingratiating herself into the lives of a fabulously successful middle-class family, and tearing them apart.

We know nothing about Chloe's background, but sex work isn't often very glamourous even if you're at the upper end of the market, and I wonder whether her machinations aren't partly motivated by resentment. The film luxuriates in the accumulated capital of the unsuspecting family – they have an ostentatiously-designed house, beautiful furniture, and they spend all of their time in fancy restaurants. This is a film about well-off people having marital problems (the dullest genre of contemporary fiction), but then the added ingredient is someone on the very margins of society looking in and seeing what she doesn't have.

Maybe class envy is a reach too far, although it does make the film's glossy sophistication a tad more bearable. There is instead a throwaway reference Chloe makes to her mother's hairpin, which the film makes symbolically significant. Chloe lied about the hairpin previously, but perhaps the connection with her mother is true, in which case her wish to give it to Julianne Moore may be inspired by a need for a replacement mother, or a route into a family she doesn't have.

The last shot of the film shows that Moore has accepted that gift, even when Chloe is no longer there. Chloe has been turned into a thing, which just highlights that for much of the film that's all she was. But at least that thing now finally starts to have a meaning for Moore. Chloe is no longer just a tool or a vessel for other people's desires, but someone with desires of her own. In the erotic thriller genre, the femme fatale's motives are usually malevolent, but here it's Chloe that's ultimately the most out-of-control and desperate, even if Julianne Moore is the one that looks like her life is falling apart. Accepting the gift is an act of forgiveness, and perhaps also a recognition of Chloe's subjectivity, even if it remains largely elusive to her, and us.

Exotica

One long striptease of a film, except what is being revealed isn't alluring at all. These clubs are wells of loneliness, and Exotica is about putting that pain and neurosis on display. The film begins with the command to observe people closely – this is a customs official at an airport instructing a newbie, but the lesson is actually for the audience. We are here to ferret out what the characters we meet are hiding.

The task is complicated by the fact that all of them are friendless – some are dealing with loss, others have never been able to adjust to society. And so conversation is inevitably guarded and stilted. In the most explicit description of this unmoored kind of existence, a character talks about a constant state of tension between himself and others. He doesn't try to overcome it anymore. It's just something you get used to and live with.

The film loops in the owner of an exotic petshop who is somewhat peripheral to the slowly unfolding story, but serves to mirror and comment on the proprietors of the stripclub. Both establishments are inherited – the current owners never managing to step out of their parents' shadow. The dancers are associated with exotic animals put up for sale, and the film makes the point that they are for entertainment, not healing. Except the latter is what the characters really need.

Atom Egoyan seems to be interested in the ways people cope with trauma – particularly the idiosyncratic crutches they lean on to process it, even if to the outside observer the behaviour looks strange or deviant. The film seems to suggest that the protagonist doesn't go to the stripclub for a sexual thrill at all – although you can interpret this more unkindly if you so wish. The petshop owner has his own strange way to spend his evenings, and they are mostly for the purposes of hooking up. But the film is asking us to dig a little deeper, and try to accept the way people choose to deal with their problems, even if they seem unsatisfactory at first glance.

There are several layers of meaning in the line "it's a jungle out there" – which gets muttered as one of the characters is leaving the petshop. It underlines a feeling of detachment and alienation from others. But if we are to associate the shop with the nightclub, it also suggests that these places are havens where the hostility of the outside world is tamed. For those that find sex or relationships impossible, Exotica a sanctuary.

I think Egoyan presents all this rather uncritically – he might think that this is where the characters should end up. I'm not sure that's a good lesson to draw, however. The film presents a torturous path to overcoming trauma – one that comes very close to inflicting more hurt and death on people. There is also something about the main character (a white middle class guy) doling out cash to young women in order to work through his issues that feels a bit cringe. The power to weave the fantasy you need to keep going is granted to those who can pay for it, and we get very little insight into the history and desires of the women who provide these services – until the very last moments of the film, that is.