Fiction and reality in a tense collision
THE lies we tell ourselves are often more damaging than those we fashion for the people we love.
This art of personal deception is practised with elan by characters in Tom Ford’s gripping psychological thriller.
If Ford’s Oscar-nominated debut A Single Man was emotionally cool, Nocturnal Animals reduces the temperature to sub-zero as an unhappily married woman relives the betrayal that destroyed the only openly loving person in her life.
The writer-director employs a simple yet effective film-within-a- film structure, ricocheting between reality and fiction. In both strands, innately good yet tortured protagonists make agonised choices that gnaw at their souls for the rest of their days.
Los Angeles gallery owner Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) stages provocative exhibitions that elicit coos of appreciation but are, she admits, emotionally numb.
That’s also a succinct description of her marriage to philandering businessman Hutton (Armie Hammer), whose financial woes threaten the gallery’s future.
Out of the blue, Susan receives a manuscript from her long-estranged first husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal).
Intrigued, Susan devours Edward’s manuscript, visualising Tony Hastings (Gyllenhaal again), his wife Laura (Isla Fisher) and teenage daughter India (Ellie Bamber) as they take a late-night drive.
On a desert highway, the family is terrorised by Ray Marcus (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his buddies, who abduct Laura and India.
Nocturnal Animals features powerhouse performances by Adams and Gyllenhaal. Taylor-Johnson is truly menacing and Ford sadistically cranks up tension until we, like Susan, gaze helplessly into the heart of darkness in Edward’s manuscript.
NOCTURNAL ANIMALS (15, 117 mins)