Christie Tops Sparkling Cast in ‘Afterglow’

“Afterglow” is a wonderful title for so rich and burnished a film. It is dominated by the enduring radiance of Julie Christie while allowing Nick Nolte, Lara Flynn Boyle and Jonny Lee Miller to shine just as brightly. It marks a gratifying resurgence for Christie and an effective departure for writer-director Alan Rudolph from his multicharacter movies of recent years. It is also surprisingly demanding for a romantic comedy.

What Rudolph has done is to take a classically simple situation: Nolte’s Lucky and Boyle’s Marianne have an affair. Then their respective spouses, Christie’s Phyllis and Miller’s Jeffrey, have their own dalliance unaware of what’s going on between Lucky and Marianne.

This plot is the stuff of classic farce, and although Rudolph doesn’t stint on the comic elements, he has layered in concerns and insights to create a film of impressive emotional density that much of the time is simultaneously funny and sad.

Rudolph honors the complexity of the characters he has created by pacing his scenes in accordance to what he senses is psychologically valid for them. He is unerring in this, but it takes adjustment on the part of the viewer, who must be prepared for long sequences and abrupt shifts in tone.

Seven minutes short of two hours is in itself a long running time for comedy, but “Afterglow” is richly rewarding in its comment on the curse of selfishness within relationships and the value of forgiveness between people who truly love each other. What gives it its edge is that as it unfolds we begin to fear that Marianne and Jeffrey are doomed to repeat the mistakes of Phyllis and Lucky.

Lucky is a Montreal contractor, a handyman who is especially handy with the women he meets on the job. Meanwhile, Phyllis, as desirable and vibrant as she is, spends far too much time watching a string of tacky horror pictures she starred in in the ‘70s. In time we learn that Phyllis and Lucky’s marriage has been blighted by a terrible loss.

Meanwhile, when Marianne hires Lucky to do some remodeling we discover her marriage is no less dysfunctional. Jeffrey is a formidably successful young businessman who’s eager to break out of his career, and when he comes home to his ultrachic apartment he’d like Marianne to be waiting for him with a warm meal and a sympathetic ear instead of attempting to seduce him in her desperate desire to have the child he in fact does not want.

Rudolph has done a terrific job in involving us in this quartet. Phyllis is a woman of self-deprecating wit and irony, of bitter self-knowledge, and Christie brings her alive in what is surely one of her finest roles, laced with great lines.

Who better to play Lucky than Nolte, a rugged kind of guy in whom maturity is sexy. Lucky, however, is more than a practiced philanderer but a man capable of self-reflection, a man with poetry and pain in his soul that he’s hard put to express. Marianne is an especially tricky role, for she often comes across as an airhead, but she knows enough to realize that she’s got to either make her marriage work or get out of it. Boyle is consistently nimble in handling Marianne’s flightiness and longing. What a contrast Marianne is to the tough dame Boyle played in “Red Rock West.” Miller similarly excels in taking us through the despair, self-absorption and bravado of Jeffrey, a man who can say that he’s working “the edge of his charm” and, amusingly, mean it. In one of the details that add so much to the film Jeffrey is so complimentary to his secretary (beautifully played by Domini Blythe), a chic woman older than he, that he unwittingly leads her to hope that something could happen between them.

“Afterglow” has the supple style and sophistication that has long been Rudolph’s hallmark, and it exudes with elegance from Toyomichi Kurita’s perfectly modulated camera work and Mark Isham’s mellow score. “Mellow,” in fact, is the word that best describes Christie and the movie as well.

* MPAA rating: R, for sexuality and some language. Times guidelines: There is pervasive double-entendre, blunt language, adult themes.

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‘Afterglow’

Nick Nolte: Lucky Mann

Julie Christie: Phyllis Mann

Lara Flynn Boyle: Marianne Byron

Jonny Lee Miller: Jeffrey Byron

A Sony Pictures Classics release of a co-production of Moonstone Entertainment/Sand Castle 5/Elysian Dreams. Writer-director Alan Rudolph. Producer Robert Altman. Executive producers Ernst Stroh, Willi Baer. Cinematographer Toyomichi Kurita. Editor Suzy Elmiger. Costumes Francois Barbeau. Music Mark Isham. Production designer Francois Seguin. Art director Collin Niemi. Set decorators Anne Galea, Pierre Perreault. Running time: 1 hour, 53.

* At selected theaters throughout Southern California.