In Nocturnal Animals, the devil is in the refined details. Tom Ford’s sophomore directing effort (in theaters Friday in New York and Los Angeles; additional cities Nov. 23 and opens nationwide Dec. 9), his follow-up to 2009’s A Single Man, infuses a Hitchcockian thriller with modern-day opulence, telling a story of death and heartbreak.
Susan (Amy Adams) is a wealthy (if miserable) married art gallery owner living a carefully curated life in L.A. who receives a manuscript written by her ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). She — and the story — soon disappear inside the book’s plot, in which a fictional family experiences a brutal carjacking on the backroads of Texas at the hands of a psychotic killer (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).
Adams shot her designer-clad scenes in Los Angeles, separately from the Texas carnage, with her character decked out in Cartier, Louis Vuitton and Chanel.
