Afterglow (film)
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
| Afterglow | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | Alan Rudolph |
| Produced by | Robert Altman James McLindon |
| Written by | Alan Rudolph |
| Starring | Julie Christie Nick Nolte Lara Flynn Boyle Jonny Lee Miller |
| Music by | Mark Isham |
| Cinematography | Toyomichi Kurita |
| Edited by | Suzy Elmiger |
| Distributed by | Sony Pictures Classics |
|
Release dates
|
<templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
|
|
Running time
|
113 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $2,465,960 |
Afterglow is a 1997 feature film starring Nick Nolte, Julie Christie, Lara Flynn Boyle and Jonny Lee Miller. Alan Rudolph directed and wrote the script for the film. It was produced by Robert Altman and filmed in Montreal.
Christie's performance earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role[1]
Plot
Young, ambitious businessman Jeffrey Byron and his sexually frustrated wife Marianne, and older repair contractor "Lucky" Mann and his former B-movie actress wife Phyllis, are unhappily married and living in Montreal, Canada. After 15 years of marriage, Phyllis tells her husband that he is not the father of their daughter and that she conceived the child via relations with attractive co-actor Jack when he was away on Navy duty. Lucky is deeply shocked by this, leaving the house to reflect upon their relationship, ultimately going to the bar and drinking in excess. After coming home, Lucky rails at his wife for being unfaithful, and throws household items at her. Upon hearing his tirade, their teenage daughter Daisy leaves the house the very same night. Her absence intensifies their negative relations and Lucky and Phyllis decide to stay together on certain terms, namely sleeping in different rooms and not with one another or others. They receive a letter from Daisy in which she writes that they are not fit to be her parents and she never wants to see them again. Consequently, Lucky and Phyllis sell their house and travel to Montreal, Canada, where the letter was post-marked in order to find her (though the viewer only comes to know this later in the film).
Byron is working hard to provide for his family and to lead a more comfortable and luxurious life. Due to excessive work pressure and not being ready to have children, he avoids sex with his wife, who desperately wants to have a baby. One day, Byron returns from the office to find that Marianne has arranged a candlelit dinner and sweet music, having marked the dates where she is most fertile on the calendar in order to have sex with him that she can conceive a child. However, Byron plans a trip to Lake Lenore Hotel during these dates so that he can attend an important business meeting there, and so that he could spend some romantic moments with his wife. She warns him that she is going to have a baby with or without him, but he does not take her very seriously.
The following day, Lucky arrives at Byron's apartment to make some minor repairs, and Marianne becomes obsessed with him and decides to have a baby with him. She employs Lucky to create a nursery for her future child and to connect the bedroom and the nursery so she can spend more time with him. Soon Lucky and Marianne begin an affair. She begins to ignore her husband and has unprotected sex with Lucky several times between her due period dates. Byron senses some foul play due to the sudden change in Marianne's behavior towards him and her absence from the house, trying to spy on his wife in vain. Phyllis continues her search for her daughter in the streets of Montreal, but is met with failure. She goes to a bar to take her mind off her daughter, and she notices that her husband and Marianne are also having drinks in the same bar, talking about how beautiful it is to cheat on one’s spouse. Later, Byron gives her a lift home in his car when a taxi is unavailable. On the way he offers to spend a weekend with her at Lake Lenore hotel as a friend as he has discovered his wife's affair, but she politely refuses. She agrees to spend the weekend with him only when she finds that her husband is spending most of his time with Marianne (without knowing that she is Byron’s wife).
On the day fixed for the trip to the Lake, Byron takes her with him in place of his wife who doesn’t bother with him at all and is fully smitten with Lucky. She stays at the hotel with Byron but in different rooms. Another married person, who is actually Byron’s business client, tries to flirt with her. After having a few drinks at dinner, she explains why her relations are so bitter with her husband, then leaves her room. She tries to call her husband but Lucky is also trying to call Marianne at the same time while Marianne is outside the house. When Byron phones his wife, she picks up thinking that he was Lucky and calls him “Lucky Darling”. It upsets Byron and he visits the room of Phyllis. As soon as he enters the room, the doorbell rings again, and Byron’s client appears at the door with a bottle of wine, asking her to make a choice between him and Byron. She takes the bottle of wine and tells him that “she may accept his offer to know more about each other some other night”. It upsets Byron and he decides to leave the next morning with her. On the way, Byron asks her why couples can’t happily live in a chaste relationship with their spouse, to which she had no reply.
After not receiving a phone call from Marianne, Lucky goes to her place late that night to have sex with her. In the morning she reshuffles all the furniture in the house and puts her paintings all over the walls (which Byron disliked). Then she tells Lucky that she wants a divorce from her husband. He says that he can’t marry her as he has already married for the last 24 years, and he can’t leave her wife as he still loves her very much. She tells him that many marriages do not work and a single mother brought up the child as her own. This is why she needs Byron to bring up her baby. He tells her his own story about how he came to know about the betrayal of his wife and how his rash and thoughtless reaction spoiled his happily married life forever. Even today, after passing of eight years, he is facing the consequences of that decision.
Byron and Phyllis visit a bar for a drink and find that Marianne and Lucky are already there. Byron and Lucky engage in a fight, and Lucky is ejected from the hotel by hotel security. Marianne and Phyllis leave and grab a taxi together, while Marianne is still unaware that Phyllis is Lucky’s wife. Phyllis asks her how she feels with Lucky. She replies that “he is most fucking man she had ever met in her life.” Then she asks her how many men she had met so far in her life and Marianne replies “two”. Marianne asks Phyllis whether she has had sex with Byron, but she tells her that she didn’t as her husband loves her very much and strongly believes in the chaste relationship. Marianne invites her in the house for a drink and Phyllis accepts. Marianne gives her a tour of her house. When they go to the child's room created by the Lucky, Phyllis finds her husband's pajamas and Marianne's nighty, and the decorating texture is similar to that one used in her daughter’s room. Phyllis asks her whether she is pregnant. She replies that she has a strange feeling from a last few days (indicating that she is pregnant) and Phyllis asks her whether she knows who is the father of the child. She happily names him as “Lucky”. Phyllis asks her whether she had told him about it, suggesting that she do so without delay (so that she wouldn’t have to face the same consequences as Phyllis did upon revealing the true father of the child) when Marianne replies in the negative, and Marianne promises to tell him about it as soon as possible. When Phyllis is about to leave, Byron arrives. At the same moment Lucky arrives searching for his wife and they fight again. Phyllis tells Lucky in the lift that she doesn’t want to see him again as she knows what he had done here. Lucky leaves in hurry just behind her. Marianne asks Byron “How does Phyllis knows Lucky’s name?”, and he tells her that he is her husband.
That night, Marianne visits Byron to repair their relationship, but her attempts to restore intimacy fail. Byron goes to a bridge in order to get some fresh air and accidentally falls down, resulting in a fracture in his right leg. In the morning, Marianne packs up her things and goes to Helen (Byron's secretary and their mutual friend) and tells her that they have separated and perhaps her “baby” may be the last connecting link between the two (knowing that it is the only reason for their separation and they will never be together again). Knowing about their differences on having a baby, Helen asks her who is the father of the child, and she tells her it is Byron. She bids Helen goodbye and leaves Byron without facing him or telling him about her pregnancy. Byron returns from the hospital to find that she has already left. Lucky finds his daughter near the river and tries to bring her back home by apologizing profusely, but she refuses.
Cast
- Nick Nolte as Lucky Mann
- Julie Christie as Phyllis Mann
- Lara Flynn Boyle as Marianne Byron
- Jonny Lee Miller as Jeffrey Byron
- Jay Underwood as Donald Duncan
- Domini Blythe as Helene Pelletier
- Yves Corbeil as Bernard Ornay
- Alan Fawcett as Count Falco/Jack Dana
Critical reception
The film received positive reviews from critics and holds a 74% approval rating on aggregate review site Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 6.8 out of 10, based on 31 collected reviews.[2]
Awards
Julie Christie was nominated for Best Actress in a Lead Role in the 1997 Academy Awards for her role. She won best actress at the San Sebastian Film Festival. The cast won the jury award for best ensemble performance at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, and Nick Nolte won the best actor award at the same festival.
References
- ↑ http://www.filmsite.org/aa97.html
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
