Nocturnal Animals ends at the scene of that arranged reunion. Emotionally moved, she arranges to meet with him in order to discuss his work and their past. Fiction and fact, past and present commingle: Susan increasingly interprets Edward’s fictional narrative of excruciating, unlooked-for separation as a surrogate for their shared real-life experience of the same thing twenty years previous. Lastly, we also witness flashbacks to different stages in Susan and Edward’s unsuccessful relationship two decades before. Additionally, however, we also see her subjective visualization of Edward’s lurid plot as she races through it. His film continues to show her going through the motions of an unsatisfying life in the present. Tony’s subsequent pursuit of official justice is complicated when the local investigating officer, Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon), tries to goad and gird him toward vigilantism instead of legal due process.Īs Susan page-turns, Ford pleats. Ray and his goons abduct, sexually assault, and kill Laura and India. An all-night drive across the Texas plains ends in tragedy when Tony’s family is waylaid by a small gang of murderous locals, led by Ray (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). In that text, central character Tony (also played by Gyllenhaal) loses his wife, Laura (Isla Fisher), and daughter, India (Ellie Bamber), in appalling circumstances. What Edward sends (and dedicates to) his former spouse is a manuscript copy of his debut novel, Nocturnal Animals. Susan receives an unsolicited package from her ex-husband, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal), a man she has not seen for twenty years. And then the past intervenes into this unprepossessing present. Her lucrative career as a high-end LA gallerist sees her shuck sensationalism in the name of “Art.” Her husband’s impeccably square jaw conceals a comparably hard heart. Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) is a woman who increasingly doubts whether she really Has It All. But in so visibly trying and failing to do so, Nocturnal Animals also suggests its director’s desire to push himself significantly further and harder than was the case with the chamber piece confines of his debut feature, A Single Man (2009). What distinguishes valid processes of aestheticization-taking things apart-from vapid ones of commodification- tarting things up? When and why does the potentially liberating frisson of defiant male nonconformity tip over into full-on toxic masculinity? Does the law become something else the moment you take it into your own hands? Ford’s movie doesn’t manage fully coherent or convincing answers to any of this. Boundaries become blurred with regard to any number of Ford’s central themes and preoccupations. The murky fascination of Nocturnal Animals lies, however, in the film’s inability to follow its own advice. Be careful what you most wish for in life: the thrill of any chase comes with a less obvious, but no less real, capacity to chill in tow. Among other things, Ford strives to extract from Austin Wright’s 1993 source novel Tony and Susan a morality tale about flip sides. In this, it both echoes and amplifies its two central protagonists’ shared state of extreme psychic uncertainty. More surprising, perhaps, is the extent to which the movie palpably aches to let it all hang out. A Focus Features release.īreaking news: Nocturnal Animals, fashion designer-turned-filmmaker Tom Ford’s second feature, is never knowingly underdressed. Produced by Robert Salerno and Tom Ford directed by Tom Ford screenplay by Tom Ford, based on the novel Tony and Susan by Austin Wright cinematography by Seamus McGarvey editing by Joan Sobel and Deborah Richardson production design by Shane Valentino costume design by Arianne Phillips and Donald Mowat music by Abel Korzeniowski starring Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
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