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"Afterglow"

That is what you leave the theatre after seeing a movie like “Afterglow”. It is so beautifully mesmerizing that you wish all the people had behave better badly.  Julie Christie almost looks as refreshingly fresh from her Academy Award performance in “Darling” thirty years ago.  But has she honed that image to a beautiful performance.  As a B-movie ex-queen that had specialized in horror flicks and now retired with her philandering husband who does quite well in the fix-it department, especially with sex-starved women, he has his way with a wrench as well as with a wench and when that wench rears it demanding head in the shape of Lara Flynn Boyle, who is determined to have a baby with or without her husband help, played by Jonny Lee Miller. Well the machinery is in the works.

What a cast Alan Randolph has the pleasure of working with and loving it, for it is all there on the screen for everyone to really relish manage a quatre.  The stakes have never been higher.  Nick Nolte hasn’t had a role in years that he could really sink his teeth in and yet there is compassion in his need to help Jonny's wife, though if the script leaves a bit much to imagine why would someone like Nolte leave his Julie wanting.  Not that Julie is not above seeking revenge, unwittingly with Jonny, who accidentally meets her at a bar.  There has to be some coincidences for the story to further itself.  Anyway with such dazzling performances by all you hardly mind suspending your disbelief. a wee bit.  Men may wonder at the mystique of women, but women will understand and forgive, for love is a many faceted thing.

Reference:
Afterglow
Sony Pictures Classics
Produced by: Robert Altman
Written and directed by: Alan Rudolp
With:

• Nick Nolte as Lucky Mann
• Julie Christie as Phyllis Mann
• Lara Flynn Boyle as Marianne Byron
• Jonny Lee Miller as Jeffrey Byron