L'amour... et après

I like Alan Rudolph movies. I always thought of him as Robert Altman Lite.

When I saw "Welcome to L.A." in 1902 (I am exaggerating, but barely), I loved it and it seemed very Altman-like, and even starred some of the Altman-ettes like Geraldine Chaplin and Sissy Spacek. Most of the people were unhappy and if I'm not mistaken, Chaplin spends the whole movie in taxi cabs, taking pictures of the corners of buildings.

When I saw "Choose Me" years later, it had a breezy, jazzy feel to it that I loved. It was about people in love, unlucky in love, wanting more love, wanting love from someone else, etc.

"Afterglow" is a little like both of these movies. It has its jazz soundtrack intact and the people are miserable.

In a nutshell, Julie and Nick haven't had a decent moment together since before they can remember. Lara and Johnny Lee are much younger but also accumulating many bad moments. Secrets are revealed.

Both couples switch mates. They are not that much happier. Both find out about the other. That's it.

Nolte and Julie Christie have some good scenes together, but she has much more chemistry with Johnny Lee Miller, who gives the best performance in the movie by a mile. He nails his role as a yuppie/scumbag perfectly.

The whole thing is way too long. There are unnecessary scenes galore. If it were not for Julie Christie, I would have lasted 20 minutes w/this one. 5/10.

This movie is destroyed by the screenwriter's inability to finish off any of the main storylines. This movie is destroyed by the director's unwillingness to trust the actors with actual characterization. This movie is destroyed by the cast, who seem to have no idea what their characters are supposed to be doing or feeling at any given moment.

The actors say all their lines as if they are great quotes. ALL of them. ALL THE TIME. I'm up for a mood piece every now and then, but you have to maintain the mood. At least with the altered film-speed sequences in "A Clockwork Orange", you've been prepared to expect some quirkiness of technique. Here, it just looks terribly silly (as does the last ten minutes).

The director might as well have put the camera in front of an aquarium full of horny cuttlefish. You get about two and a half minutes worth of entertainment before it all starts to look the same.

Well, I'll begin with what I think is certainly the best thing about this movie, and that would be the acting. Particularly, I think Lara Flynn Boyle and Nick Nolte give the two best performances in the film and play the two most interesting characters. Julie Christie, who received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her role in this is good, but I thought her character was actually the least interesting in this. Jonny Lee Miller's performance left me kind of unimpressed at first. I actually thought it was kind of bad to be honest. But after thinking on it, I think his performance is fine. It's my least favorite out of the four, but I think his acting fits his character's buttoned-up demeanor. I also enjoyed the music in this film. I enjoy jazz, so I found it very pleasant. I even searched for the soundtrack online. But as for the movie itself, I feel like it wants to be straightforward and unconventional at the same time, and I lost track of which movie it was supposed to be. On the surface, it's about two couples who end up unknowingly switching partners via infidelity. And yet two of the four people I don't really care that much about. Lara Flynn Boyle's character is the most interesting to me out of everyone, and I felt the most for her. While I don't condone what she does about her situation, hers seems the easiest to understand. Nick Nolte's character is my second favorite character in the film, and that's largely also in part of him just being a great actor. I don't condone his actions, and yet his unfaithfulness even has some slight reasoning behind it. But in the case of the characters played by Christie and Miller, not only are they not that interesting separately, but I don't even know what they saw in each other when they began their little fling other than the most obvious thing they had in common, which were unfaithful partners. I understood what led to each couple sort of going about doing things the way they did, however one couple's problems were shown and the others seems to just get explained. And yet, something was still off to me about a character. It seems like a movie where you have to try to make the most of what's here when it's not all spelled out. I don't mind movies like that, but when half of the characters/material are uninteresting and then you have to try to fill in gaps too, I just don't care at the end of the day. It's not a terrible movie, and it has good scenes, but I was kind of underwhelmed by it.

I have extremely mixed feelings about this film. On the one hand, I have only praise for Alan Rudolph for writing a great character for Julie Christie to play and giving her a role she could truly sink her teeth in and prove again what a sensational actress she is. And yet - the film that has been built around her is an almost total dud. I found the plot lame, and Lara Flynn Boyle and Jonny Lee Miller execrable. But when Nick Nolte and especially Julie Christie are on screen, all is forgiven. They're great together, but it's Christie's film all the way. She is such a rarity - an actress who combines genuine Movie Star Glamour, the real deal, with a thoroughly modern sensibility. I could go on gushing, but let me just say that she is sublime and this film gives us an all too rare opportunity to see her in full glory, albeit in a vehicle that's less than worthy of her.

The lives of a has-been-actress, a charming sleazy plumber, a bored housewife and a stressed corporate head intertwined in this low key screwball. If made by studio heads this film would have been hard to swallow, but when handled by the maestro, Alan Rudolph, and starring real actors, it works a treat.