'Afterglow' a superb tale of cross-generational romance

By Tam Notosusanto

JAKARTA (JP): If you're old and gray, is it really too late to leave the painful past behind and start anew? And if you are still young, is the future really bright and full of possibilities?

Afterglow, the latest film from independent American filmmaker Alan Rudolph, explores these questions in this exquisite story about four people -- two pairs of husbands and wives -- who collide in circumstances of confusion and abandonment.

Jeffrey and Marianne Byron (Jonny Lee Miller and Lara Flynn Boyle) are a fashionable young couple living in a luxurious apartment in Montreal. He is an ambitious businessman who spends his time pursuing and nailing down profitable business deals, and is extremely contented with his wheeling-and-dealing life. She, on the other hand, is the unhappy housewife who is left daily in the grand but soulless apartment.

Marianne's sorrow rises mainly from her longing to have a baby, but Jeffrey is too busy with his work and with himself to spend even a little time with her. "Nothing is working, Jeffrey," she tearfully complains. To which he deadpans, "On the contrary, everything is working quite well on many levels."

On the other side of the city, another, much older couple, is living out their lives of quiet desperation. Lucky Mann (Nick Nolte), a cheerful, no-nonsense repairman, lives with his wife Phyllis (Julie Christie), an elegiac former B-movie actress who spends her days watching tapes of her old films. Lucky is a warm, charming guy who, besides plumbing and plastering, entertains the lonely housewives who are his clients. "If you bend it, I mend it, if you break it, I make it," is Lucky's signature greeting to these women.

Phyllis is aware of Lucky's activities, but lets them go because their relationship has gone sour over the past few years to the point where they only share a house, no longer in love with each other. "The hardest part is finding out too late that none of it lasts," says Phyllis to her husband in one of their frigid conversations.

But Lucky and Marianne manage to break away from this web of despair when Marianne, on the recommendation of her friend's mother, hires Lucky to do some renovation at her apartment. The emotionally fragile Marianne soon finds comfort in Lucky's company and amid the torn-down walls of the apartment and tools, they begin a May-December affair. "Ohhh, you smell like a man," exclaims Marianne as she snuggles up close to Lucky. "Jeffrey smells like soap."

Writer-director Rudolph, who has made art house hits such as Choose Me, Trouble in Mind, The Moderns and Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, may seem to have come up with an old-fashioned story. But his deft writing and handling of the characters give Afterglow a stylish edge. Particularly when Rudolph challenges plausibility, bringing the cross-generational romance full circle by having Jeffrey and Phyllis, who are following the clues of their spouses' extramarital affairs, meet at a bar and become smitten with each other.

The film follows a tragicomic course as Lucky and Marianne continue their tryst while Phyllis and Jeffrey go out of town together. But these relationships eventually provide the characters the keys to overcome their sadness and desperation and find what they are really seeking.

Rudolph's delicate screenplay is a wonderful mix of humor, contemplation and a little bit of mystery -- evident in the secret surrounding the Manns' missing daughter. As a director, Rudolph has a way of constructing scenes which speak volumes without much dialog, for instance the one where Jeffrey unwittingly ends up in an ostensibly gay restaurant.

The power of Afterglow, though, lies in its superb acting. Although Boyle is not overly impressive as the hysterically distraught wife, Miller (Trainspotting, Hackers) is commendable as a cold yuppie, while Nolte remarkably redoes his happy-on-the- outside, crushed-on-the-inside tough guy from The Prince of Tides.

But the real star here is Julie Christie. This alumnus of London's Central School of Music and Drama breathes life into Phyllis Mann, beautifully transmitting every bit of this character's restlessness, anger, desire and pain from the screen into the audience's heart. It's a virtuoso performance that garnered her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress last year -- her third nomination (she won the Oscar for her performance in the 1965 film Darling).

It's truly a blessing to have an excellent film such as Afterglow in our theaters even if it's been two years since its U.S. release. Well, better late than never. The smartest thing for moviegoers to do now is to go see this film in droves and encourage our film distributors to bring in more good films like this one.