“Nocturnal Animals”: First Reviews and Twitter Reactions (Updated)
Amy Adams was on double-duty this Venice as the female lead in both Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival” (see reviews and reactions here) and Tom Ford’s “Nocturnal Animals.” Her festival schedule won’t lighten up anytime soon, with a tribute at Telluride last night and both “Arrival” and “Nocturnal Animals” screening at TIFF this month. Co-starring Jake Gyllenhaal, “Nocturnal Animals” reads like Tom Ford’s Fellini-soaked take on a Hitchcockian relationship-suspense thriller, with Adams as a gallery owner and Gyllenhaal as her ex-husband with a revenge novel that haunts her.
Check out pull-quotes from festival reviews down below, as well as a bunch of twitter reactions from female film critics on the ground at Venice. (We will be updating as the film continues to screen for critics though the festival season.)
“‘Nocturnal Animals,’ like ‘A Single Man’ before it, shows a Ford who wants more than merely to entertain. He wants to be deep too, to say something grand and sad and stirring about the human condition and how the things we think we grow out of might actually turn out to be the things we most need later on.” — Jessica Kiang, The Playlist
“Tom Ford takes his stylish shears to Austin Wright’s intricate 1993 novel ‘Tony And Susan,’ cutting and splicing to re-assemble a gleaming array of images in a narrative Russian doll. With its layered stories and multiple time-frames, Wright’s book is both an introspective meditation and a brutal fantasy; a West Texas revenge thriller wrapped inside a personal crisis. Ford respects the source material while making some audacious tweaks to deliver a dark, modern thriller which veers towards over-stating its case but still remains highly effective.” — Fionnuala Hannigan, Screen Daily
“If ‘Nocturnal Animals’ succeeds as anything, it works as a glossy, stylish noir, with elements of vigilante revenge (as well as elements of Michael Shannon, who shows up as an inscrutable, drawling Texas lawman). But there are too many times when Ford’s vision leans dangerously close to self-parody.” — Stephanie Zacharek, Time
“‘Nocturnal Animals’ does not disappoint, in any way, shape or form. From the first frame to the last it’s haunting and can’t-turn-your-eyes-away captivating. I’ll admit, the first shots of the voluptuous burlesque women inspired by Fellini made me wonder, and I wrote it down, if Ford’s genius had gotten so big for his shoes that people around him were too scared to say something was a bit heavy handed. But once the intent of those images, beautiful and grotesque at once, was known, I quickly crossed out that sentence from my notebook.” — E. Nina Rothe, The Huffington Post
“A bunch of naked, pudgy woman are dancing in a very glamourous and sensual way, flaunting their adipose imperfections. More than a Tom Ford movie, this frankly seems like the beginning of ein film von Ulrich Seidl. For a man of such fashionable taste and background, the sequence is provocative and disturbing. Is this a bold new statement for Mr. Ford?” — Diana Dabrowska, Cinema Scope
“The film leaves you grasping for a sense of meaning among its beautifully pretentious imagery. And that might be the point. Like “The Neon Demon,” “Nocturnal Animals” feels like a commentary on a world suffused with vanity, where obsessions with beauty and materialism protect us from our uglier truths. “Nocturnal Animals” doesn’t have much substance, but its dazzling style is hard to completely resist.” — Erin Whitney, Screen Crush
