NOCTURNAL ANIMALS: Emission Admission

Director: Tom Ford
Writer: Tom Ford
Cast: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Armie Hammer, Laura Linney, Isla Fisher, Ellie Bamber

Nocturnal Animals is a bit of a formal experiment and a bit of a revenge thriller, but mostly it's designer mogul Tom Ford's strained attempt at baring his soul. The film begins with an art exhibition that I won't spoil as it is the most delightfully weird part of the entire enterprise. As it turns out, this exhibition was curated by Susan Morrow (Amy Adams), a high profile L.A. artist whose heart isn't in her work anymore, even as she's reached the top of her craft. Part of her malaise is disillusionment with her success, and part of it is being stuck in a loveless power marriage with businessman Hutton Morrow (Armie Hammer). This comes to a head when Susan's ex husband Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal) sends her a transcript of his soon to be published novel that he has dedicated to her. She becomes fixated, both on the story of a family that encounters unthinkable tragedy, and on her memories of her relationship with Edward, perhaps the only genuine thing she's ever had in her life.

It's hard not to read Ford himself into Susan's character, a bourgeoisie artist who emerges from decades of irony and cynicism to try to rediscover empathy, only to find those bridges may have been long burned. At the very least that makes Nocturnal Animals a worthwhile autobiographical nugget for those interested in Tom Ford's life, which I am not. My enthusiasm rather centers around the story-within-a-story structure. In addition to Susan reading the novel, we get to experience it as well in the form of a film version that is intercut with Susan's frame narrative. As the movie progresses, these two worlds are also spliced together with flashbacks featuring the history of Susan and Edward's relationship. To double down on the messaging, Gyllenhaal portrays Susan's ex husband Edward as well as Tony Hastings, the protagonist of his novel, a choice that deliberately connects the threads and gives us a window into Susan's psychology. The transitions between these stories are crisp and playful, featuring a lot of match cuts and pertinent parallelisms. It's an auspicious way to structure a film, and it pays dividends, as each story fractal greatly enhances the others.

Unfortunately, none of the three individual stories are any good on their own. Edward's novel (or perhaps Ford's movie based on Edward's novel?) is a tacky revenge thriller that has little up its sleeve beyond gaudy miserabilism. It's like Cormac McCarthy without the rich language, nuance, themes, or grand meditations on humanity. It's supposed to be Edward's magnum opus, but it mostly plays petty and shallow. The tension works well enough, but that's all there is to it. Nocturnal Animals is universally buoyed by strong performances; this boilerplate revenge narrative would have been far more insufferable without the always brilliant Michael Shannon stealing the show as flintnosed deputy Bobby Andes, who aids the Gyllenhaal character in his quest. Props also go to Aaron Taylor-Johnson for being unrecognizable in his one-dimensional role as piece of human refuse Ray Marcus.

The flashbacks are even worse. They fill out the characters well enough, but their method for doing so is overwrought melodrama. These characters speak to each other by summing themselves up in the most abstract terms. "I'm pragmatic and you're idealistic and therefore our relationship cannot work," a character might proclaim. It's like a screenwriting exercise for essentializing character motivations that was meant to be replaced by real dialogue later.

My favorite of the three timelines is the initial framing narrative, even though about two things happen in its entirety. Or maybe one. One and a half? Much like Shannon in the West Texas story, Amy Adams singlehandedly carries a large swathe of this movie on her back. Also she lives a pretty dope arty life that's fun to see her wander through. Ford's visuals seesaw between inspired and bland throughout, but this world is the most consistently good to look at, perhaps because it's the world Ford knows best. It also contains, for no particular reason, one of the most effective jump scares I've seen all year.

So we have a movie that is greater than the sum of its parts, though the parts are mediocre enough to make that no large compliment. One could say that the mediocrity of the seed narrative is meant to illustrate the thematic exploration of the tension between high class sophisticate art forms and low class exploitation entertainment. There's merit in that, but any way you look at it, the concept of Nocturnal Animals is superior to its actuality. Despite that, it is worth checking out, and at least it has the dignity to begin and end perfectly.

2.5 / 5  BLOBS