Review of Nocturnal Animals (2016) by Sean B — 02 Sep 2017

Someone please give Oscars to Amy and Jake already. A beautiful film by Tom Ford that has three frames in its narrative. His signature of tasteful artistic composition without being too arty farty was written all over in this down to earth plot of class mismatch between a rich high society Amy Adams from New York and a poor aspiring writer from Texas, brilliantly acted by Jake Gyllenhaal.

True to Amy´s high born mother´s forewarning, Amy would indeed eventually come to her highborn sense. As her mom had predicted, Amy grew out of her young varsity puppy love for Jake to follow her mom footsteps by resuming her path in her high society life.

A high society life of art exhibitions and chairwoman to stuffy societies instead of an ordinary working class life with Jake. Jake´s heart was of course shattered not just by Amy leaving but also for their aborted baby to disappear forever.

But after 20 years in a loveless marriage with a cheating rich husband, perhaps regret for not following her heart instead of her mind, she finally heard from Jake again when she received a book dedicated to her by Jake.

We therefore see the segmented three part narrative with firstly the young varsity life of Amy and Jake, secondly the current loveless life of high society & a chauffeur driven Amy going about her rounds of art exhibitions and finally thirdly the gruesome novel she received from Jake and we got to see the story played out with Jake as the main character and the small town chain smoking cancer ridden detective brilliantly played by Michael Shannon.

Beautiful plot, directing and a fantastic cast make this another class act by Tom Ford, who is in a class of his own when it comes to good taste.