The game of love takes many strange and haunting turns, in the psychological thriller written and directed by Tom Ford, called “Nocturnal Animals”. The film is a “story inside a story,” in which the first part follows a woman named Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) who receives a book manuscript from her ex-husband  (Jake Gyllenhaal), a man whom she left 20 years earlier after a rocky marriage of disappointing results, asking for her opinion. The second element of the film follows the actual manuscript, called “Nocturnal Animals,” which revolves around a man whose family vacation turns violent and some savage types who hold them hostage after encountering. It also continues to follow the story of Susan, who finds herself recalling her first marriage and confronting some dark truths about herself and her past, blurring the realities of both stories while recounting where everything went wrong with her marriage along the way. “Nocturnal Animals” is rated R for violence, menace, graphic nudity, and adult language.

Tom Ford has always been the kind of visionary director who puts style first above anything else in his productions. It’s not that he has very little to say in material, but this is a director whose soul intention is to present the themes of his movies in the lavish and seductive visuals that his creative visuals entail. In “Nocturnal Animals”, not only does Ford have his most accomplished triumph visually of his entire career, but he also presents a portrait of love and the very long and punishing road that it takes through the dips of regret. That is first and foremost what this movie is all about; regret, and it’s done so in such a creative method of storytelling that clearly isn’t for everyone. If you’ve ever seen an art-house film, you know what I’m talking about. The story arcs aren’t always as obvious or satisfying as a mainstream big studio production will present to you, and it’s always a bit more of a struggle of the mind to piece together what the director was going for, much like when you’re staring at a painting or any kind of art piece.

The creativity here comes front-and-center for a story that constantly keeps you guessing because of its unorthodox method of telling. This is known as a scattered narrative. A story that is told in entirety, but not always in the correct order chronologically of how they happened. On top of this intelligent layer of laying out all of the events, Ford’s movie is also running two stories simultaneously at the same time. We get the present day, in which Amy Adams character struggles through a passion-less life with a stranger she currently calls husband, as well as a disappointing art career with very little energy inflicted into it. The other story is actually her ex-husband’s book that he sent to her, and those events are being played out in her head for us the audience. I enjoyed this take on the past because it really does become a crime detective story of sorts for the viewer to figure out and piece together. I’m not a fan of having everything force-fed to me, and Ford’s story never disappoints or drifts to settle for that kind of disappointment. It’s a plot that constantly kept me guessing, and rarely ever slowed down to take everything in. Much like life, it keeps moving in many different directions, and for a movie whose trailer I saw many times, I didn’t correctly predict one thing in this movie, making it the most unpredictable of sits that I had this year. The scattered style does become problematic in sorts late in the second act when the story really does throw a lot at us at once, presenting very little time to let things fully register. This does give the movie tons of re-watchability, but for a first showing this might alienate some audience members who missed an arc or two along the way to what I felt was a quite satisfying poetic ending in the backlash game of love. I also didn’t get the idea to cast different actresses in Gyllenhaal’s character’s story because if Adams is reading the story and we are seeing things through her eyes, wouldn’t she picture her own personal appearance in that likeness?

I want to talk about the art direction here because it is simply vibrant and echoing of the themes present in the movie. What Ford does in symbolism never feels obvious or forced to the audience, settling on a color palate that tells the story for us. A repeated color scheme in the film is between red or white, essentially the clashing of love versus void, and that ideal is very rampant during the movie, reacting very much to the step-by-step events that take place for this once prosperous couple. When their love blossoms, we see the color of red paint its way into our backgrounds. When their love is against the rocks, the absence of color plays symbolically to the kinds of emptiness that our two protagonists are encountering, and it is such a contrasting feeling to the former that it’s evident in the transformations that each character entails from start to finish. Amy Adams character in particular wears a lot of makeup in the current day story arc, to relate the emotionless charge that now haunts her because of the choices in her life she has made for herself. In the flashback scenes, through less makeup, it’s clear that this is to relate the shot of life that overcomes her when she runs into and falls for Gyllenhaal’s character. It’s something so subtle, but so endearing to play against performances that were absolutely out of this world.

Before I get to those performances, I wanted to tip my hat to the casting in this movie, and how articulate it is at casting the people they did for these certain roles. Whether intentional or not, the main four cast members of the movie are playing roles that are completely against what they’re typecast as, and each offer something refreshing and original to their method acting. In Adams, we see a tortured soul forced to live with the regret she wears like a scarf, but what works about Amy’s performance is her subtle timing in how she executes so much emotion almost effortlessly. To go from “Arrival” to “Nocturnal Animals” is quite the spin, but Adams proves she is one of the best actresses in modern film by emoting so much without needing the long diatribes or Oscar worthy moments. Her range feels human, and it’s in that where nearly every actor gets the concept of acting wrong. Gyllenhaal perhaps has the biggest transformation throughout the movie. He’s forced to play a weakling of sorts, but as the film progressed, I saw the wheel start to move inside of the eyes full of rage and agony for this character, and Gyllenhaal captivates in a world where he searches for a reason to live. The magic between he and Adams is so apparent and true. They really are the heartbeat of the movie because they are two people we believe are better because of the other, and it’s through their eyes where the audience must go through the same consequences that they did. Leaps and bounds however, Michael Shannon stole the movie for me as a brash veteran detective assigned to help Gyllenhaal. Shannon is already one of my favorite actors, but here he gives his most versatile of performances because we’re simply not used to seeing him as an admiring protagonist. Some of his dialogue is a little cringe-worthy, but Michael makes it work through and through. His character represented revenge to me. Another re-occurring theme throughout the film, and that theme is one that struts at the same speed that Michael does in this movie. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is also nearly unrecognizable as the central antagonist in the movie. For the guy who played heroes like Kick-Ass and Quicksilver, there’s something truly grungy and repulsing to how he plays his character. We feel like Aaron is always winking at us the audience, and his cocky demeanor is agonizing throughout the movie, giving us one of the more detestable characters of Oscar season.

“Nocturnal Animals” is a different animal all together in dramatic anatomy. Through Tom Ford’s layered artistic integrity and some truly gripping performances, this is a story that reminds us how our pasts haunt us, and define us in the best and worst of times. A lovers tale in a David Lynch world full of eye candy whose sweet taste never wore off on me the more I indulged in it.

8/10