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91Romantic comedies usually strike one or two moods, but in Afterglow, the writer-director Alan Rudolph runs through rainbows of feeling in a single scene.
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90Followers of Alan Rudolph's career will rejoice at his latest effort, Afterglow, an incredibly and incurably romantic comedy-drama that most perceptively dissects the delicate imbalances of two very modern but very different marriages.
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80Proceedings are further distinguished by Christie who is simply outstanding in a fiercely demanding role. It's an utterly absorbing performance and the keystone of a film which could, with some justification, be labelled a small masterpiece.
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80It's a first-rate chamber piece for actors, but Julie Christie brings a particularly layered depth to what could have been a very flat role; a combination of bereaved mother and castaway wife. Her torment and her intermittent joys are so fully communicated that they anchor the film.
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80Afterglow gets off to a weak start-and it's occasionally hampered by stilted dialogue and cutesy conceits; Nolte's character is named Lucky Mann-but it is nevertheless a strong, frequently touching film that benefits from a pair of brilliant performances by Nolte and Christie.
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Although Afterglow bears the lyrical slow-zooms, tracking shots, and idle character development Rudolph learned while working as an associate director on such Altman classics as Nashville (where he first met Christie), it's safe to say that much of the film's strong critical reception is due to the director's showcasing Christie's undiminished movie-star grace so reverently.
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80Even after the film's last half-hour descends into a silly season, Mr. Rudolph writes and directs with obvious affection for his characters and with a deep knowledge of whatever makes them tick.
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75The plot to this point could be the stuff of soap opera, but there's always something askew in an Alan Rudolph film, unexpected notes and touches that maintain a certain ironic distance while permitting painful flashes of human nature to burst through.
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75Nick Nolte gives a superb performance and Julie Christie is positively incandescent.
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At his best, as he is here, Rudolph is always able to locate the emotional reality inside the dream. [26Dec1997 Pg53]
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75Mate swapping is so '70s. But Alan Rudolph, who wrote and directed Afterglow, avoids making it seem dated by presenting the menage a quatre as accidental.
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75While these may not be the most unusual themes to fashion into a motion picture, Rudolph's atypical approach to the characters and their situations makes for an intriguing, if not always pleasant, movie.
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70As a character study, the film is sensitive and precise, but the weak plot often flounders. Ultimately, Rudolph is a master at conveying mood, and gives Afterglow a melancholy feel that wisely never gives in to total despair.
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67The film itself tends to wander as it pokes around uneasily for its tone. Yet this is also, undeniably, the source of much of the film's charm. Afterglow bathes the screen with a warm amber light.
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63Despite his flair for trenchant dialogue, nicely complemented by Mark Isham's bluesy jazz score, Rudolph whets our appetite but then fails to deliver. The picture limps to its ending and leaves us with nothing to hold onto.
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60Julie Christie is glorious, and that's most of what you need to know about this slight, loosely structured and self-consciously ironic soap opera in which two couples -- one young and troubled, the other older but hardly wiser -- get themselves into a series of fine messes.
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60Christie has already won prizes for the knowing weariness of her performance, and Flynn Boyle probably deserves some for her ferociously stated frustrations. But their clarity can't quite cut through the thickness of the film's air or compensate for the wooziness it induces.
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60Afterglow may not bestow Julie Christie with the hip imprimatur of a Travolta-style comeback. But the British actress coyly and elegantly updates the siren-ish presence she exuded in "Darling," "Far From the Madding Crowd," "Petulia," "The Go-Between" and even "Shampoo." [16Jan1998 Pg N.32]
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60Writer-director Alan Rudolph has been remaking his own romantic comedy-dramas for so long now that even when he gives us two couples instead of one or substitutes Montreal for Seattle--both of which he does here--the film still comes out feeling the same.
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50The comedy-drama is worth seeing for Christie's performance as a former B-actress married to a philandering handyman. She radiates a mature sexuality that's a rare treat on screen these days, and when the camera strays from her, you want to reach over and turn it back.
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50Were this movie a naval battle, it would be Lord Nelson vs. Judd Nelson, so decisively do the older actors knock the younger off the screen. [26Dec1997 Pg03.D]
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40Afterglow is a lazy river of a movie that chooses beauty over sense and rhythm over reason. It goes nowhere slowly. [16Jan1998 Pg B.06]
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