'Afterglow' hampered by hazy incongruities

By Boomie Aglietti

In his latest film, Afterglow, writer and director Alan Rudolph explores marital dysfunction, examining the overlapping relationships of two couples caught between their desires and the desires of others. Although Rudolph attempts to create normal--even, in some respects, stereotypical--characters to make his point sincere, Rudolph shows little concern for reality. Plagued too often by contrived writing and poor character development, the film leaves little more than the residue of a few intriguing psychological ideas and a blurry impression of their purpose.

Courtesy York Square Cinema Julie Christie caught between adultery and commitment.

Afterglow's pleasantly ironic title shot captures the ruddy glow of a dark, cloudy skyline at twilight, forecasting the troubled relationships of two couples living in Montreal. Marianne (Lara Flynn Boyle) wants to have a baby, but her husband, Jeffrey Byron III (Johnny Lee Miller), is too involved with his high-powered executive lifestyle to care about her desires. A similar failure of sexual communication exists between Phyllis (Julie Christie) and Lucky Mann (Nick Nolte). Phyllis, an erstwhile B-movie actress, is obsessed with the past, continually clutching photographs of her runaway daughter and watching tapes of herself in her old roles. Lucky, a fix-it man, has frequent affairs with his clients, and Phyllis puts up with his adultery because she has been unwilling to have a sexual relationship with him ever since their daughter's departure several years earlier. The couples' parallel stories intersect when Marianne, fed up with Jeffrey's lack of libido, begins a steamy affair with Lucky, and Jeffrey, aggravated by Marianne's demands, picks up Phyllis at a bar.

The film's main deficiency is its failure to achieve steady thematic development. In certain scenes, weak directing causes characters to proceed with unrealistically simplistic mindsets. This is particularly evident when, in one scene, Marianne explodes at Jeffrey for not caring about her, but flirts desperately with Lucky in the next, apparently abandoning her previous commitment to her marriage. Additionally, there are several instances of blatant scene juxtaposition that insult the audience's intelligence. In one sequence, Lucky tells Marianne that Phyllis is secure enough to accept their open relationship, and immediately afterward we see a teary-eyed Phyllis downing a bottle of alcohol with the roar of waterfalls in the background. A more trite and overstated depiction of her depression and of the turbulence of their marriage seems impossible.

Yet at other times, ideas are obscured by rather inexplicable developments. In the final scenes, during which all four individuals encounter each other and the existence of both affairs becomes clear, Phyllis scolds Lucky for his involvement with Marianne. Her claim that this affair is "not part of the deal" makes no sense, since it has earlier been established and confirmed that Lucky can cavort with whomever he wants. Equally puzzling, given their celibate coexistence, is the following scene, in which Jeffrey and Marianne engage in passionate sex. There is no way of understanding this development within the context of consistent emotional frameworks, since neither character has altered his or her feelings about the other. Jeffrey offers the wholly unsatisfying explanation that "[sometimes] we all go a little mad." Thank you, Jeffrey.

Indeed, at several critical moments--when there seems to be a possibility for the relationships to resolve their dysfunction--the dialogue degenerates into unrealistic abstractions about gender-specific attitudes toward love. With few exceptions, no conclusions are ever reached. When flashes of revelation do occur, the characters neglect their own relationships merely to blurt out irrelevant platitudes.

Nolte survives most of his weak dialogue (replete with gratuitous sexual metaphors based on his vocation) to articulate the interpersonal sensitivity that resides not so far beneath Lucky's virile exterior.

Christie and Boyle suffer as a result of weak directing. The former's portrayal of an aged, out-of-touch actress seems to be an unfortunate instance of life imitating art, while Miller's Byron is unforgivably apathetic, as embodied by his dead-pan delivery to Christie of such come-on lines as "I'm not a kid...a kid wouldn't know how to handle you."

After Marianne and Jeffrey's spontaneous romp, the camera gives us another sunset shot of the city skyline wrought with dark-gray clouds and illuminated by an orange-red glow, nicely playing on and completing the title metaphor. Together, this image and the opening shot serve as nice bookends. Unfortunately, the two also represent the murky, complicated mess in between, out of which the soul of the film is rarely able to shine.

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