Fashion designer Tom Ford’s reputation from his time as controversial Creative Director at Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent precedes him with his second movie, Nocturnal Animals. I’ve never seen anything quite like its first scenes, in which overweight women dance naked in slow motion during Susan Morrow’s (Amy Adams) gallery opening. If the intent is to unsettle the audience, it succeeds. However, I’m not sure the rest of the movie is quite as disturbing. It’s sad and dark, but not particularly shocking or violent.
As she was in Arrival, Adams’s character in Nocturnal Animals is an unhappy woman. Currently married to a cheating husband, Hutton Morrow (Armie Hammer), she carries the burden of the horrible act that ended her first marriage to Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal). Never quite able to accept her attempts at encouragement while they were together, Edward has written a novel during the time since their split. He sends her an advance copy and it rocks her world. As she reads it, the story comes to life in a movie-within-a-movie.
Gyllenhaal plays a second character in this story, Tony Hastings, whose road trip with his wife, Laura (Isla Fisher), and daughter, India (Ellie Bamber) becomes a nightmare when they’re terrorized by rednecks from West Texas. As Nocturnal Animals is shot, it’s apparent there are parallels between Susan’s current state of being and that of fictional Tony when his family is raped and murdered. I can’t quite explain these parallels, but they may be more abstract instead of concrete, figurative instead of literal. You can definitely form your own ideas about it.
While two stories are unfolding, there are flashbacks of Susan’s relationship with Edward, from the childhood crush they shared, to bumping into each other in New York, to moving to Texas to get married and attend graduate school. It’s all against the wishes of Susan’s mother, Anne (Laura Linney), who, in one scene, is terrific as a blunt, snobby realist insisting that her idealistic daughter is really no different than she is. I’m certain this fundamental conflict is what leads Susan to her ultimate despair.
