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Nocturnal Animals (2016)
Tom Ford's second feature, after his successful A Single Man in 2009, is a more formally and narratively ambitious film about a rich L.A. gallery owner (Amy Adams) with a strained marriage who begins revisiting her former life after receiving a manuscript for a novel from her ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal). With its novel-within-a-film framework, the film feels inescapably literary, but Ford solves the challenge of shifting to/from and incorporating the 'fictional' portion of the picture sleekly, even if the storylines arguably do not tie in with each other quite as powerfully as one could have hoped. Instead, they remain individually effective, and Ford shoots the gritty backwoods with just about the same subtle irony and disdain as he does the glitterati art world. That being said, he cares for his main characters, even if it's more in the form of sympathy than empathy. There are skilful, if somewhat unfulfilled performances from the two lead stars. And of course solid work by the always dependable Michael Shannon.
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