Nocturnal Animals’ Will Suddenly Turn Into the Family’S Worst Terrorist

CHICAGOLAWBULLETIN.COM FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2016

Volume 162, No. 241 Serving Chicago’s legal community for 161 years

to push Tony further into danger and we are never sure whether he ‘Nocturnal Animals’ will suddenly turn into the family’s worst terrorist. The power of this stylish, vi- sually beautiful film (Seamus Mc- RE B E C CA effectively a movie Garvey is director of photogra- L. FORD phy) is not the storytelling but the many artistic, literary and cinematic ideas it presents, sending Rebecca L. Ford is counsel at Scharf o n e’s mind off in directions that within a movie Banks Marmor LLC, and concentrates her practice on complex litigation, compliance, may or may not relate to the nar- board governance and specialized r a t i v e . employment issues. She is the former Rather than an integrated body Tom Ford’s film a visual stunner, but the executive vice president for litigation and of work, the visuals, the love story intellectual property at MGM. She can be and the crime story can almost be intertwining plots don’t always fit together reached at [email protected]. experienced separately. Except for S h a n n o n ’s performance, the action on the screen doesn’t rise to “Nocturnal Animals,”the sec- fortress. It is a splendid setting there are two films in one. match the movie’s visual level. ond feature film directed by with a Jeff Koons Balloon Dog In the movie-within-a-movie, a The optic feast stands apart as Texas-born fashion designer Tom sculpture by the pool. But Susan man named Tony (also played by an extraordinary succession of im- Ford and adopted by Ford from is alone at night while her hus- Gyllenhaal) drives through the ages —like slides in an art lec- an Austin Wright novel, is a Rus- band cavorts, unable to sleep as night with his wife and daughter ture. The scenes of night terror sian nesting doll of cinematic she ruminates her regrets. Lonely, on an interminable west Texas are velvety in their darkness, ideas: Southern gothic terror em- lacking in confidence and racked road. They are on their way to characters abandoned in the bedded in noir romance, encrust- with debt, one day out of the blue visit Marfa, Texas, the desert art desert are silhouetted by painterly ed with lavish imagery. she receives a package from her colony. The family is forced off skies, and powdery pink corpses Jake Gyllenhaal is Edward, a ex, Edward. He has sent her the the desolate road, then kidnapped are posed as reclining odalisques. brooding, insecure writer who proofs of his new novel entitled and tormented by backcountry Director Ford said in an inter- grew up in Texas with aspiring “Nocturnal Animals.”It is dedi- brutes. view with The New York Times artist Susan (Amy Adams). The cated to her. Michael Shannon (“B o a r d w a l k that by sending Susan the night- two reconnect in New York as marish manuscript, Edward is graduate students and marry, saying, “This is what you did to notwithstanding Susan’s mother Except for Shannon’s performance, me. This is how it felt when you (the marvelous Laura Linney) left me.” warning her that Edward is weak the action on the screen doesn’t rise to Perhaps. But the crime thriller and she will grow to resent him. is solid in a way that Susan’s plot- Mother was right, and Susan match the movie’s visual level. line can’t equal. The two stories ditches Edward to marry a hand- are essentially non sequiturs, like some rich guy, Hutton (Armie As Susan reads, the movie E m p i re”) delivers a stellar per- timber and gauze. Intertwining Hammer), with predictable re- skips, cuts, and flashes back be- formance as the rogue sheriff, them, then lathering on luscious sults. tween Susan’s past with Edward, Bobby Andes, who eggs on Tony cinematography, doesn’t resolve a Years later, Susan is a Los An- her present with Hutton, and the to seek revenge. Andes, both fundamental lack of integration — geles art dealer living in a fu- “D e l i v e r a n c e ”-style crime story of shaman and trickster, is menacing it just gives one’s mind a place to turistic concrete-and-glass E d wa rd ’s composition. Suddenly, and off-kilter. He doesn’t hesitate w a n d e r.