Nocturnal Animals (2016)

The second film by fashion designer turned film director Tom Ford, Nocturnal Animals is adapted from the 1993 novel Tony and Susan by the late novelist, critic and literature professor Austin Wright. This movie is kind of tough going, not a lite or happy film. The opening sequence is of an 'art' exhibit featuring obese naked woman wearing marching band hats, a way I suppose of telegraphing that this is going to be a movie about ugly people, even if the actual cast is good looking. This is not surprisingly a very 'literary' movie, nicely structured and very well put together. There are two primary narratives, the 'framing' narrative focusing on Susan Morrow (Amy Adams), a rich art gallery owner living in Los Angeles whose marriage is gradually dying, and the second the narrative of a novel that Morrows first husband Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal) has written, dedicated to her, and sent an advance copy before publication. The action switches between Susan and her life, the novel's narrative as she reads it in sections, and flashbacks through the rise and fall of her marriage  to Edward. We see how each of these narratives feeds into the others and tells us more about Susan and Edwards relationship and why it failed.

The narrative of Edward's novel is like something out of Cormac McCarthy or early Ian McEwan. It is set in Texas, where both Susan and Edward grew up, and concerns a man (Jake Gyllenhaal) who while traveling by night through a rural part of the state with his wife and daughter is forced off the road by some rough redneck local boys, and is left for dead in the middle of nowhere while his wife and child are rapped an murdered (to further push home that the wife in the novel is a stand in for Susan, red headed Amy Adams ins replaced by red headed Isla Fisher in these sequences). Gyllenhaal eventually makes it back to civilization and teams up with a local police detective played by Michael Shannon. in probably the most memorable characterization of the film, and over the course of years they work the case to bring the perpetrators to justice, and when it looks like one of them might get off, they start to discuses going outside of the law to see that justice is served, and that is where I will leave you with that story line.

The move is full awkward and tense scenes, particularly during the novels narrative, and none of those is more tense then the prolonged sequence on the side of a desert highway at night, in which those three roughens menace Edward and his family, it can be really hard to sit through because you know where this is ultimately heading. The movie is filled with great actors, often in little more then cameo parts, such as Laura Linney as Susan's mother, and Michael Sheen and Jena Malone as Susan's friends. Aaron Taylor-Johnson won the Golden Globe for best supporting actor as the ringleader of the gang that terrorizes Edward's family. This is a very dark, very fine film, a real achievement for all of those involved, yet I'd have to advise most people I know against seeing it. This is a rough one, but still ****