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Fashion designer Tom Ford (USA, 1961) debuted with A Single Man (2009).
Nocturnal Animals (2016), based on Austin Wright's novel "Tony and Susan" (1993),
cuts back and forth between three narratives: the present, the past and a novel.
It is, first and foremost, a tale of doppelgangers: the protagonist of the novel is played by the same actor who plays the writer and his wife is played by the same actress who plays the writer's ex-wife.
Somehow the latter decides that the novel must be an allegory for the way she killed the writer's aspirations and that the novel is the writer's revenge exacted on her.
It is not clear, however, what dies when the novel's protagonist dies and
the writer rejects his ex-wife's overture. There might be revenge in both
the novel and real life, but in the novel the avenger dies a ridiculous death
whereas in real life the avenger survives and presumably goes on to become
a successful writer.
The film contains a satire of both the art world (depicted as ridiculously insane opulence) and the rural white-boy world (in which both thugs and cops are psychotic).
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