#Nocturnal animals movie how to
#Nocturnal animals movie movie

He wants Susan to understand the pain she’s caused him, and she gets the message. Tony is clearly a stand-in for Susan’s ex, Edward, and the novel is his cry of anguish over the death of their relationship.

#Nocturnal animals movie how to

This sequence is the best in the film, tense and beautifully sustained, a suggestion that Ford knows how to shoot action even though he generally favors gorgeously arranged inaction. (They’re played by Isla Fisher and Ellie Bamber, respectively.) Tony’s plan is to drive all night, but on the deserted highway, he ends up in a terrible, and ultimately tragic, game of cat-and-mouse with a bunch of rednecks.

#Nocturnal animals movie movie

That part is easy to understand: The novel, dramatized as a mini movie within the bigger one, tells the story of a Texas man, Tony (Gyllenhaal), who sets out on a road trip to Marfa with his wife and teenage daughter, both of whom look markedly like Susan. She sits down to read it, and it shakes her to the core. This is the initial “Just what are you trying to say, Tom Ford?” prompt, the first of many.) And suddenly, a box has landed on Susan’s kitchen counter: It contains a novel written by the ex-husband she hasn’t spoken to in nearly 20 years. They’re shot so that every lump, bump and jiggle is exaggerated. (The movie’s opening credits feature what we learn later is part of her gallery’s most recent installation, a video series featuring a group of garishly made up, overweight women who are mostly naked except for a few over-the-top red, white and blue majorette accessories. It’s revealed that Susan hates what she does for a living.

This is our first clue that she’s a woman who has made all the wrong choices: Her hyper-handsome husband (played by hyper-handsome Armie Hammer) has lost much of the couple’s money through bad business deals. And that’s the most frustrating thing about this picture: There seems to be some nuance here-something that is possibly very meaningful to Ford-that just can’t break through the movie’s glassy surface.Īmy Adams plays Susan, a sleek and seemingly successful Los Angeles gallery owner who wears lots of chic dark clothes and way too much sooty eye makeup for a fair-skinned redhead.

(Ford adapted the screenplay from Austin Wright’s 1993 novel Tony and Susan.) But it’s unclear exactly what Ford is trying to say, though it’s clear he’s trying hard to say something.

As shot by the gifted cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, Nocturnal Animals is beautiful-or at least arresting-every minute, and it sure isn’t boring.