As a film director, Tom Ford is a great art director. By this I mean that, with the exception of “Bling” director Sofia Coppola, he is uniquely concerned with the surface of things. This is not surprising, for Ford has made his name as one of the premier fashion designers of his generation. But in his movies – “A Single Man” (2009) and now “Nocturnal Animals” – he expresses ambivalence about appearances, especially when it comes to keeping them.
It’s also not surprising that both films are literary adaptations. You get the sense that Ford knows he’s best at fleshing out someone else’s content; form and function, baby. Starring Colin Firth, “A Single Man” is curated from Christopher Isherwood’s interior novel about the melancholy of a closeted professor, and Ford’s fascination with midcentury American style allows us to glean the depth of his protagonist’s depression; if these creamy colors and sharp angles aren’t going to make this man happy, nothing will. But based on Austin Wright’s 1993 novel, Tony and Susan, “Nocturnal Animals” is a tougher sell, mostly because the director amps up the book’s stakes – vamps them up, too – without locating its core. You could dismiss it as a stylish exercise, except that he’s chasing some messages that never deliver. Continue Reading →
