Writer-director Tom Ford’s NOCTURNAL ANIMALS is a movie that clearly fancies itself hip and ingenious, but ends up as flabby as the middle-aged obese women that dance naked in slow motion during the opening credits.
With NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, Ford presents a dual storyline that alternates between a Texas-set Bronson-esque revenge tale and an arty Lynch/Refn-inspired look at the ugliness of modern life. Amy Adams stars as Susan, a wealthy but sad Los Angeles art gallery owner (those naked chubbettes are an exhibit) married to Hutton (Armie Hammer), an unfaithful stockbroker with money problems. One day a manuscript is delivered to Susan, a novel titled Nocturnal Animals, dedicated to her and written by her former husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) who she has not spoken to in 19 years. She lays down to read it and suddenly we are in the book, where math professor Tony (Gyllenhaal again), is driving through Texas with his wife (Isla Fisher – resembling Adams) and their bratty teen daughter (Ellie Bamber). They’re forced off the road and terrorized by a trio of unwashed hooligans led by Ray (Aaron Taylor Johnson). The encounter ends in tragedy and the shattered Tony then teams up with laconic, cancer-stricken detective Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon) and the pair spend months trying to solve the crime.
NOCTURNAL ANIMALS bounces awkwardly between this story-within-the-movie and the more stylishly-filmed story of Susan, juxtaposing her pity party with Tony’s shocking ordeal. At first, there’s mystery. Is some of Ed’s novel is based on truth? A phone call from Susan to their daughter reveals little, but why does his story freak her out so much? There are long flashbacks to points in Susan and Edward’s relationship, but these shed little light on the puzzle.
There are some good moments in NOCTURNAL ANIMALS. A scene when Susan’s younger colleague (Jena Malone) shows off her sleeping baby on her phone app is well-written and ends with a nice shock, but too many sequences, including that tense highway encounter and a flashback of Susan and Edward’s first dinner date go on far too long. Amy Adams is in low-key misery mode in the contemporary scenes while perky in the flashbacks, but Susan is not a very compelling character nor much of a challenge for the actress. Gyllenhaal is the one forced to display big emotions, fear and anger and regret, but he’s only partially successful. It’s the supporting cast that shines. Michael Shannon’s chain-smoking surface swagger peels back to reveal a man of depth and character. Armie Hammer’s blandness works in his favor for a change while an unrecognizable Aaron Taylor Johnson hits all the right hateful notes. A scene stealer is Laura Linney as Susan’s narrow-minded mother who we’re told is a conservative Republican, which I guess explains the enormous Barbara Bush-style pearl necklace she sports.
Ford heightens the melodrama with a lush and seductive score by Abel Korzeniowski which nicely mixes with Seamus McGarvey’s cinematography, iridescent in the L.A. scenes while earthier during Tony’s Texas nightmare. Ford’s caricature of the Lone Star State is about what you’d expect from a former Gucci fashion designer; a place of dark and dangerous highways where backwoods yokels have toilets installed on their front porches, and where the brutal rape and murder of two upper class white women is assigned to a single lowdown detective. I was never bored with NOCTURNAL ANIMALS but its competing narratives don’t mesh well and the film ultimately doesn’t add up to much.
2 1/2 Stars
NOCTURNAL ANIMALS opens Wednesday November 23rd in St. Louis exclusively at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Theater
