Nocturnal Animals (2016)

Nocturnal Animals (2016) may be a failed masterpiece!

So… how am I going to go about this review? Rewind the film? Or take it down? Stay objective or subjective? Here’s the avenue I’m going to pursue: This film is an excellent idea. The first hour is great and I could have given it at least four stars. Unfortunately, the film runs about 55 minutes longer. And as a result, he reminds us that he put the viewer in a great deal of discomfort right from the opening credits. The violence is quite extreme. The realism and horror of the situation is chilling. The father’s cowardice is irritating.

There are two stories in this film. The problem is that it’s one bad story embedded in another bad story. So subtlety is quickly lost. A woman who’s tired of the bourgeois milieu in which she operates her artistic creations is neglected and stumbles across a manuscript by her ex-husband who, in the end, will have a kind of revenge for what she has done to him.

The actors are good. Amy Adams is incredibly charming in this film. You can spend hours watching her, admiring her… but also feeling sorry for her. Loneliness and confusion suffocate her. Jake Gyllenhaal is as charming as ever. Two roles in one! A family man, not very brave, too cautious… but can you blame him? We’re not all tough guys. Are we comparing this film to Lynch? Why not! In fact, there are many ways of understanding it.

But even though it made me think, and I’m happy to think, I still left the film with a rather negative feeling. It’s interesting, but too dark for me to see it again any time soon. I cutting down my rating by 1.5 star.