If Alfred Hitchcock were still alive and making movies, he might have made this slick, visually stunning, disturbing suspense drama.  As I was watching it, I saw specific shots and camera angles that I feel he would have enjoyed and possibly employed, and the story within a story had a nightmarish quality to it, as if it were North by Northwest pointed southwesterly and blended with Deliverance.  On the other hand, Hitchcock would have produced a better movie.

Tom Ford’s film starts unforgettably, although one might wish it hadn’t, raising the question of what, exactly, qualifies as “art.”  This is an important question for art gallery owner Susan Morrow (Amy Adams), yet she fairly quickly admits that her latest offering of performance art is “junk.”  I think she is right, but that statement undermines her career, as well as the opening of the film!  Anyway, Susan is sent a manuscript from her ex-husband; as she reads this story-within-the-story it becomes more real to her than her own existence.

The manuscript story, a revenge tale about abduction and murder and revenge in west Texas, flows in and out of Susan’s “real life,” yet is filmed with the same sense of reality and immediacy, so it is no surprise that it takes over the film.  What I did find surprising is Susan’s reaction to it; she is shocked and sometimes frightened by it — it’s a frightening tale — but I was sure that she was reliving certain experiences or recalling a horror she had survived.  But having watched the film, that doesn’t seem right.  Why is she so bothered by it?  Does she feel that he is writing about punishing her for leaving him twenty years earlier?  Nothing about this is clear to me, especially after the final scene, which raises more questions than it answers.

While visually powerful and thematically disturbing, the film was not particularly satisfying to me.  I didn’t care for the way the manuscript story ended, which was almost farcical.  And, ultimately, I don’t think it has very much to say.  I liked the performances of Jake Gyllenhaal and especially Michael Shannon, and I generally liked the way the tale was told, yet the feeling I eventually came away with was one of pretentiousness rather than substance.  The middle hour-and-a-half was good, but I really disliked the beginning and the ending; how strange is that?  ☆ ☆.  8 December 2016.