Ford casts Jake Gyllenhaal as the would-be novelist college professor she left behind for the callow ambition and money of the runway-ready Armie Hammer.Īnd the film, built around the icy art entrepreneur/museum maven Susan (Adams) stylishly coming to grips with her failing second marriage while reading a self-referential confessional thriller novel manuscript by her first husband (Gyllenhaal), veers between a commentary on modern manhood, and parody of the mercenary nature of marriage in America, at least among the affluent and heterosexual of Texas.Īn art show opening offers a chic, shallow triumph for Susan, whose marriage to Hutton Morrow (Hammer) is falling apart as his business fails and he compensates by cheating.īut there’s the consolation of “Nocturnal Animals,” a novel her ex Edward Sheffield (Gyllenhaal) sent for her to read in her designer bed, in her showpiece bath tub, all in her glistening, austere Architectural Digest home.Īs she cozies up with the book, she flashes back to that first marriage, young idealistic love which her frosty, frosted “Real Housewives of Dallas” mom (Laura Linney, killing her one scene) warned her away from.

The second film from the fashion designer and former creative director for Gucci glams up Amy Adams, but gives her one of the most constricting roles of her career. Style trumps story and performance in Tom Ford’s “Nocturnal Creatures,” an arch film noir wrapped in the plastic of art world aesthetics, and damn near smothered by them.

Review nocturnal animals ending