God bless Tom Ford

Holy shit.

So I finally finally finally managed to get my flat pals all in the same place (and actually alive, not hungover, ill or asleep) and got them all to Broadway Cinema to see Tom Ford's 'Nocturnal Animals'. Oh my godddddddd.

So if you haven't already watched it, here's a quick-ish summary:

An art gallery owner receives a manuscript of a novel (Nocturnal Animals) written by her ex-husband. It is also revealed that she has remarried, to someone who is having affairs. She reads the manuscript and seems to realise things about her past, her life now and herself via this manuscript. This is a story within a story though, and the second part of the story follows the manuscript as if it was an actual reality: one in which the ending is deadly and the content is violent.

It's amazing because the opening scene shows obese women, naked, dancing, sparklers and tassels everywhere. Then instantly, it slips into this almost silent narrative (if that's even possible) where you can tell straight away that there's no happiness in this. It's a complete juxtaposition: from women who society may assume that they're not necessarily happy with themselves, their appearance or their lives, sat against a gorgeous woman who is clearly very successful and wealthy but also very very very sad.

Extremely sad, to the point where I'm actually kinda worried about her. She needs some help. But from what I can tell she mostly has herself to blame, and whilst the manuscript creates realisations for her personally, as an audience it gives me the realisation of what the ex-husband feels. Like the manuscript is literally painting a picture of him, someone who isn't necessarily given enough screen time for you to get this kind of image of him. A fictionalised character is fully representing the way in which he overcame how brutally she left him, and who she ran to and what she'd become.

Because of course, she left him (an aspiring yet kinda unsuccessful writer but still super cute) for the rich, Ken-doll-looking guy who's had one too many spray tans. She claims this is because he's weak, a word that is used repeatedly in the film and by her own mother, and too sensitive. She also had an abortion, of the ex-husbands child, without telling him she was pregnant in the first place :) :) :) human beings everybody.

So in the manuscript side of the story, a family vacation goes tits up when a husband, wife and daughter are run off the road by a group of men and become stranded in the middle of nowhere. Before long the conflict turns violent and two of the men speed off in their car with his wife and daughter inside. They are later discovered dead: the wife was hit in the head and died from a fractured skull, the daughter had been suffocated, both were raped.

Their bodies were placed on a red sofa in the middle of the desert, at the end of a dirt track, outside an abandoned trailer. This red sofa appears in the reality side of the story at one of the pinpoint moments when the woman tells the man she doesn't like his writing, that he should go back to school and do something that will make him successful. Another ironic point is that the way in which the bodies were placed in the story on the sofa, was then mimicked by the real daughter, who's father I assume is the Ken doll guy, but she was in bed with who I assume is her other half - which leads me to believe she's happy, and who's character in the manuscript doesn't represent the real person.

So then I was thinking, that the fact that she (in real life) had an abortion, and was actually with the new guy when she was sobbing about it and the ex guy was stood in the rain watching them cuddle in the car is echoed by the fact that one guy in particular (in the group of rapists and murderers in the second story) took away his wife and daughter much like the new ken-doll-looking guy took away his wife and unborn child?

Tom Ford got me feeling all the feels.

I also found it super interesting to see who was in the cast:

- Amy Adams playing the crazy woman, someone who has played princesses in Enchanted and addicted shoppers before in Confessions of a Shopaholic.

- Jake Gyllenhaal playing the ex-husband and the guy who loses his wife and kids in the manuscript. Someone who played characters like Donnie Darko is perceived now as a weak, romantic character. But also looks super dreamy and super Tom Fordy.

- Armie Hammer playing the new husband who looks like a literal real-life plastic doll (but in that old-high-end-fashion-campaign way.) Like straight away I could tell his character was going to be an actual idiot.

- Aaron Taylor-Johnson playing the rapist/murderer when he is best known for being the cute, sensitive it boy (Robbie) from Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging but it's also great to see that he's finally got his shit together and looks hot again. All is well in the world.

ALSO THE FREAKING MUSIC.

Like even if you were the most unfeeling person ever, this music would actually FORCE you to restart your heart and actually take something emotional away from this film.

You genuinely felt like this film was a piece of art. Every last detail. The house she lived in. Even the gate in her driveway had more camera time than others might have given it. You could just feel Tom Ford sitting behind the camera. Obviously, the costume was impeccable and it was almost like an inside joke when the camera would zoom in on Amy Adams putting her glasses on or how Jake Gyllenhaal legitimately looked like he was an American pilot from the 50's but that aero nautical look was a trend at one point. It sort of symbolised the youth (as this was a flash back of them breaking up) the white t-shirt, informal jacket, it was all very lovely.

I haven't been able to half of what I wanted to but in hindsight I don't want to spoil it for you. And I will defo be talking about the ending if I carry on babbling. And semi cos it's twenty to one and we had a 3am fire alarm last night.

If this makes zero sense to you then pls pls pls get yourself to some sort of cinema so you can drag me to one side and fangirl about it.