Tom Ford
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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). Tony (played by the same actor who plays Edward) is driving his car at night through the Texas desert with his wife Laura (played by the same actress who plays Susan) and their teenage daughter India. Suddenly two cars block his way, occupying both lanes of the highway. He honks at the car that is blocking the passing lane and they start pursuing him. The three thugs in the car react to the daughter giving them the middle finger. They repeatedly hit Tony's car until they force him to stop. The three thugs toy with Tony and his family. Ray is the most delirious and psychotic. Eventually, Ray and Turk take off in Tony's car with the ladies, while Lou forces Tony to drive the other car into a dead-end unpaved road. Lou dumps Tony and drives away. Tony starts walking in the dark. Later the thugs return and look for him but Tony wisely hides in the dark. The following morning Tony reaches a house and alerts the police. Tony takes a hotel room while a police officer, Bobby, searches the desert for his wife and daughter. Bobby calls him that they found the bodies in an abandoned shack; mother and daughter have been killed after being raped. Later, Bobby makes a point of telling Tony that the mother's skull was cracked by a blow and that the daughter was suffocated. A flashback shows the time when Susan and Edward met again while they were in graduate school, just beginning their careers as, respectively, artist and writer. Susan is the aggressive one, asking Edward for a date. They confess to each other that they had a crush on each other and sleep together. In real time Susan is clearly disturbed by Edward's novel, as if it retold a fact of their past. Susan tells a friend that Edward's novel is titled "Nocturnal Animals" because that was the way he called her. Susan feels guilty that she left Edward for Hutton and the way she did. She has nightmares about the rapid of Edward's novel and can't sleep. She is depressed, alone in the big mansion while Hutton is way in a business trip, and probably cheating on her. Back to the novel: it takes months for Bobby to come up with something: he found Lou, whom Tony promptly identifies. Turk has been killed in an attempted robbery. Bobby now wants to find Ray. Another flashback shows Susan's wealthy and snobbish mother trying to dissuade Susan from marrying the poor Edward. The mother told the daughter that she would regret marrying a poor man, but the daughter proudly claimed that she was not attach to wealth. The mother predicted that Susan will regret it. In the novel Bobby locates Ray (shitting naked in an outdoors toilet) and takes Tony to confront him, but Ray denies any encounter with Tony and his wife and daughter. Back to real time, Susan emails Edward that she accepts the invitation to dinner. She now thinks that Edward wrote a great novel. A flashback shows Susan reading Edward's first novel and criticizing it. She now sounds like her mother. She is actually regretting it, just like her mother predicted it, and she cannot live any longer with a poor aspiring writer. Back to the novel: Ray is released for political reasons. Bobby tells Tony that he has lung cancer and only one year to die. He doesn't want Ray to go free and asks Tony if he's willing to break the law. Tony is. Bobby doesn't care about the consequences since he is dying anyway. Bobby and Tony take Ray and Lou to a secluded cabin and try to extort a confession. Bobby has a crisis of vomiting and the two thugs escape, but Bobby manages to shoot Lou dead. Another flashback shows Hutton and Susan after Susan aborted Edward's son. As they are leaving she sees a petrified Edward staring at her outside the clinic. In the novel Tony breaks down in front of Lou's dead body: Tony is gripped by the sense of guilt for not stopping the thugs from killing his wife and daughter. They split to search for Ray. Tony finds Ray in the abandoned shack. Ray, convinced that the weak Tony will not shoot, tries to hit Tony with a fireplace poker but Tony shoots him dead. However, Ray hits him in the head before collapsing dead. Tony wakes up bleeding and blind. He stumbles outside and shoots in the air to call Bobby, but then he falls to the ground and accidentally kills himself with a gunshot. The soundtrack is just a loud heartbeat until he dies. In real time Susan is crying thinking of how she betrayed Edward. Clearly she thinks that her life would have been happier (if poorer) with Edward. Susan dines alone at the fancy restaurant where she's supposed to meet Edward, but Edward never shows up |
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