SNAPSHOT
From writer/director Tom Ford comes a haunting romantic thriller of shocking intimacy and gripping tension that explores the thin lines between love and cruelty, and revenge and redemption. Academy Award nominees Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal star as a divorced couple discovering dark truths about each other and themselves. (official synopsis via Coming Soon)
To this day, Tom Ford’s arresting directorial debut A Single Man (2009) remains one of the most emotionally-evocative, searing observations on the human condition, insights enhanced by a lush, immersive visual style that married tone and substance to perfection.
And if the review from The Guardian is any indication, his follow-up film Nocturnal Animals, which once again takes a look at the darker side of relationships and love in an adaptation of the 1993 novel Tony and Susan by Austin Wright.
“There is something much more uninhibited and even raucous about this picture, which combines melodrama with a kind of teasing sophistication … It is about the revenge of the past on the present and the present on the past. The older person avenges the slights and reversals of struggling youth by getting rich and successful. The younger person, reaching out maliciously from the past, mocks this bland victory by with memories of the idealism you have abandoned, the youthful beauty and hope you have lost and the sickening inevitability of becoming like the older generation you once despised.”
It looks gritty, powerful and utterly impossible to walk away from unchanged, something which is fast-becoming a Ford hallmark and one which you can only hope he will bring to an increasing number of films in the future.
Nocturnal Animals opens in limited release on 18 November in USA and wider release on 9 December.