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Tom Fords Nocturnal Animals is a mess of clashing styles

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS (Tom Ford). 116 minutes. Opens Friday (November 18). See listing. Rating: NN

After making a promising (if overly showy) directorial debut with A Single Man, Tom Ford goes off the deep end with this overheated, ludicrous melodrama.

Distracted Los Angeles gallery owner Susan (Amy Adams), already coping with a distant husband (Armie Hammer), receives a manuscript from her first husband, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) a brutal tale of murder and vengeance set in their West Texas birthplace called Nocturnal Animals. Ford cuts between Susans empty life and the narrative of the book in which Gyllenhaal and Adams play a couple who have a catastrophic run-in with some highway marauders with additional flashbacks to Susans history with Edward.

Its a mess of clashing styles: the real world is a clumsy satire of superficial fashionistas, while Edwards novel plays out as a pastiche of David Lynch and the Coen brothers. (This at least explains why lead marauder Aaron Taylor-Johnson is styled exactly like Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona.)

Adams coasts elegantly along, while Gyllenhaal gives his all in the book sequences, but neither of them has any impact on the thing. The only actor who comes out respectably is Michael Shannon, but of course he does as a no-bullshit lawman investigating that highway attack, he invigorates the film every time he turns up. Not that it helps.

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