User Reviews

There's no doubt Julie Christie was one of the most unique personalities of the late sixties and early seventies. A remote beauty who was sexy and charming in Billy Liar and Darling, haunting and enigmatic in Don't Look Now and McCabe and Mrs. Miller and one of the few things worth remembering about Doctor Zhivago. Her notorious pickiness when it comes to choosing roles has served her well and she is one of the few stars from that time who has moved quite gracefully through a film career. Her resources as an actress allow the character of Phyllis Mann to come alive in a way that few could accomplish and the magic she creates is unforgetable. Laid back hipster Alan Rudolph's sexual roundelay has a lush look on top and a jazzy score below but it's Christie who sears the visuals with sadness, mystery, and wit. Nick Nolte's rugged charm serves him well throughout and when these two are alone together on screen, the art of film acting is proudly displayed. Watch the scene when a drunken Phyllis tries to rekindle their physical relationship and notice the body language. Note to filmmakers: Rudolph's genius is knowing when not to move the camera and in trusting his actors to do the work.

The film seems ponderous and flat at first and Johnny Lee Miller and Lara Flynn Boyle are still learning their craft (their scenes do grate), but Afterglow is a cockeyed success for those with patience.

I have extremely mixed feelings about this film. On the one hand, I have only praise for Alan Rudolph for writing a great character for Julie Christie to play and giving her a role she could truly sink her teeth in and prove again what a sensational actress she is. And yet - the film that has been built around her is an almost total dud. I found the plot lame, and Lara Flynn Boyle and Jonny Lee Miller execrable. But when Nick Nolte and especially Julie Christie are on screen, all is forgiven. They're great together, but it's Christie's film all the way. She is such a rarity - an actress who combines genuine Movie Star Glamour, the real deal, with a thoroughly modern sensibility. I could go on gushing, but let me just say that she is sublime and this film gives us an all too rare opportunity to see her in full glory, albeit in a vehicle that's less than worthy of her.

A handyman with marital problems (Nick Nolte) meets a housewife (Lara Flynn Boyle) with the same.

This is really about as average as movies get. The cast is decent, with Lara Flynn Boyle leading the way. Julie Christie received an Oscar nomination... it must have been a slow year, or maybe it was a "career Oscar", because this is not an outstanding film that needed to be singled out by the Academy.

There is no humor, no exciting twists or turns. This is just your standard film of loveless marriage and infidelity. Not one thing about it really stands out as unique. So, what happened here? Why did great actors sign on? Why did Robert Altman help produce?

How did this movie get rated 6.9 out of 10? Was Nick Nolte stuffing the ballot box? I agree with all who said it was boring and pretentious, but disagree that Julie Christie did much to help it.

"You're the most fascinating woman I've ever met", he tells her after knowing her for about five minutes. Perhaps that will give you a sense of the sophomoric nature of "Afterglow"; a film which tells of two neurotic married couples, one middle aged (Nolte/Christie) and one younger (Boyle/Miller), and their respective interwoven infidelities. With a solid core cast and good technical and artistic capabilities and an interesting premise, "Afterglow" should have offered more than characters we're not given to care about even if we could suspend disbelief long enough to care. Nonetheless, there's enough going for this mediocre drama to make it a worthwhile small screen watch for sofa spuds with an appetite for the subject.

Calling Alan Rudolph an acquired taste is like calling CASABLANCA just a WWII film; it doesn't even begin to tell the story. I happen to like his films when they don't star Keith Carradine (whom I don't like), but can see why others don't. In a Rudolph film, plot is less important than mood and texture, and there really isn't much of a plot in this film, it's pretty much all mood and texture. The dialogue he writes is also right out of the 30's and 40's (a friend once said Rudolph films are what would happen in Bogart ended up in a Fred Astaire movie).

In this movie, the dialogue sometimes falls flat, and some of the tone shifts are jarring. In addition, Miller's character is a complete lout; we hardly understand why Boyle, let alone Christie, would even bother with him. And Boyle had a character to play in Rudolph's EQUINOX, but here, she just flails around.

Nevertheless, this is a good movie, and that's partly because of the romantic pull Rudolph does achieve, and because of the performances of Nick Nolte and Julie Christie. Although both of them are playing characters past their prime, Rudolph films them like old movie stars would be filmed, and matches his tempo to their performances, which are relaxed and confident (which contrasts to Boyle and Miller, whose discomfort is obvious). Critics up here noted this was one of the few, if not the only, U.S. films filmed in Canada (Montreal) that actually took place there.

I saw this movie and very thoroughly enjoyed it. No, it was not realistic, no, it was not stellar acting, or serious story. It was exactly what it bills itself to be, a romance-comedy. This movie is good escapism. If you need a smile, or just to sit back and relax without getting all overly engrossed in a movie, this is a good one to pick.

The writer/ director Alan Rudolph clearly understands the beauty of woman. The combination of Julie Christie and Lara Flynn Boyle is beautifully juxtaposed. Nick Nolte provides the rough male energy that highlights the facets of the younger / older woman beauty esthetic. The screenplay provided excellent scenes and the camera work and lighting was top notch. My only disappointment was that I did not see this gem on the big screen.

The movie has not very strong plot but still, its nice and worth to watch. good performance also.

I like Alan Rudolph movies. I always thought of him as Robert Altman Lite.

When I saw "Welcome to L.A." in 1902 (I am exaggerating, but barely), I loved it and it seemed very Altman-like, and even starred some of the Altman-ettes like Geraldine Chaplin and Sissy Spacek. Most of the people were unhappy and if I'm not mistaken, Chaplin spends the whole movie in taxi cabs, taking pictures of the corners of buildings.

When I saw "Choose Me" years later, it had a breezy, jazzy feel to it that I loved. It was about people in love, unlucky in love, wanting more love, wanting love from someone else, etc.

"Afterglow" is a little like both of these movies. It has its jazz soundtrack intact and the people are miserable.

In a nutshell, Julie and Nick haven't had a decent moment together since before they can remember. Lara and Johnny Lee are much younger but also accumulating many bad moments. Secrets are revealed.

Both couples switch mates. They are not that much happier. Both find out about the other. That's it.

Nolte and Julie Christie have some good scenes together, but she has much more chemistry with Johnny Lee Miller, who gives the best performance in the movie by a mile. He nails his role as a yuppie/scumbag perfectly.

The whole thing is way too long. There are unnecessary scenes galore. If it were not for Julie Christie, I would have lasted 20 minutes w/this one. 5/10.

The lives of a has-been-actress, a charming sleazy plumber, a bored housewife and a stressed corporate head intertwined in this low key screwball. If made by studio heads this film would have been hard to swallow, but when handled by the maestro, Alan Rudolph, and starring real actors, it works a treat.

Nick nolte, julie christie. Lara boyle, a couple falls for another couple in this look at a marriage which has some cracks in the floorboards. When lucky comes to repair some things around the house, marianne gets more things looked at than she had planned. But that's okay..., her husband jeff has plans of his own. We follow along as things progress... or as they don't. A study of marriages in trouble. We just go along for the ride, it's okay. The dynamics of marriage, as the couple try to figure out where they are, and what they want. Written and directed by alan rudolph. Julie christie was nominated for best actress.

If this is the US film industry answer to nouvelle-vague and Alain Tanner, I'd rather be in Switzerland. Beside, The apartment building Habitat 67 and the apartment don't fit. Furthermore, what has a punk such as Johnny Lee Miller got to do with that job. He never seems to work and anyways looks too disturbed to do anything but walk on the roof. Next what are the chances of him having an affair with his wife's lover' wife: slim, right? What's that thing about Christie and Nolte's estranged daughter. I did not get it. The only hint of humor is when Miller jumps or falls off a bridge and beaks a leg. Get it?

Just saw this movie on tv last night and throughout the movie, I kept wondering why Jonny Lee Miller's character was so mean. I don't get it. Why is he so cold to his wife? Why does it seem that the only emotion he can emit is anger? I thought this was a so-so movie, not too shabby but not great either.

This immoral and involuntarily couple-swapping modern-day allegory has its conspicuous foible to cater for a wider demography, a self-consumingly pitched battle falls unfulfilled, one can feel the highly-contrived scheme runs amok at the latter part, and the films ends in an emotional gratification which is too Utopian to be credible to believe.

The film garners a third Oscar nomination for the divine Julie Christie (after a 26 year hiatus since MCCABE & MRS. MILLER in 1971), whose role is the thorniest among the two pairs, and the film's pathos concretely hinges on her crack knack to embody the old lady who has her personal magnetism to fling with a frigid and wealthy pretty boy (only half of her age) at a convincing ease. Julie gracefully accomplishes her mission meanwhile Nolte, Miller and Boyle are all in solid shape to enliven their characters with ample credibility, although the thunder remains to belong to Ms. Christie.

The central trauma orbits a childless status quo, which both couple yearn to alter, Christie tries to find her daughter back (who has deserted her 8 years ago after overhearing a hidden truth); while the bourgeois young wife Boyle is in eager to get pregnant when his sexually glacial husband refuses or is unable to commit the task.

The mirror reflection has been exerted as a recurring gambit in the film, and the not-so-often witty wisecracks could be derived from director/writer Alan's strenuous endeavor on the script. Overall this low-budget marital vignette delivers a dramatic thesis on the lust-harvesting adult world with less-than-eloquent material and theatrical mechanics. Only Julie Christie exhibits a satisfying portrayal to deserve the time and dime we proffer.

Well, I'll begin with what I think is certainly the best thing about this movie that would be most of the acting. Particularly, I think Lara Flynn Boyle and Nick Nolte give the two best performances in the film and play the two most interesting characters. Julie Christie, who received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her role in this is good, but I thought her character was actually the least interesting in this. Jonny Lee Miller's performance left me kind of unimpressed at first. I actually thought it was kind of bad to be honest. But after thinking on it, I think his performance is fine. It's my least favorite out of the four, but I think his acting fits his character's buttoned-up demeanor. I also enjoyed the music in this film. I enjoy jazz, so I found it very pleasant. I even searched for the soundtrack online. But as for the movie itself, I feel like it wants to be straightforward and unconventional at the same time, and I lost track of which movie it was supposed to be. On the surface, it's about two couples who end up unknowingly switching partners via infidelity. And yet two of the for people I don't really care that much about. Lara Flynn Boyle's character is the most interesting to me out of everyone, and I felt the most for her. While I don't condone what she does about her situation, hers seems the easiest to understand. Nick Nolte's character is my second favorite character in the film, and that's largely also in part of him just being a great actor. I don't condone his actions, and yet his unfaithfulness even has some slight reasoning behind it. But in the case of the characters played by Christie and Miller, not only are they not that interesting separately, but I don't even know what they saw in each other when they began their little fling other than the most obvious thing they had in common, which were unfaithful partners. I understood what led to each couple sort of going about doing things the way they did, however one couple's problems were shown and the others seems to just get explained. And yet, something was still off to me about a character. It seems like a movie where you have to try to make the most of what's here when it's not all spelled out. I don't mind movies like that, but when half of the characters/material are uninteresting and then you have to try to fill in gaps too, I just don't care at the end of the day. It's not a terrible movie, and it has good scenes, but I was kind of underwhelmed by it.

Lucky 'Fix-it' Mann meets an unhappy, frustrated female client and winds up in bed with her after mouthing some of the most boring one liners I've ever heard. Meanwhile, Lucky's equally frustrated wife falls into bed with Lucky's girlfriend's hubby after some equally abysmal dialogue. Is Hollywood so desperate for films that they will accept anything, or was this garbage rammed through by some powerful yet untalented mogul? Seldom has a picture been this devastatingly dull. One gross of thumbs down. -12 stars. Gad!!

Not a great story (even annoying at times), but a great film. Beautifully photographed by Kurita, with more than a few truly mesmerizing enchanting moments. Many of those scenes capture the essence of nonchalance which Julie Christie has perfected (or reveals of herself). Her magical detached, casual, indifference thru Kurita's lens is the power and soul of Afterglow.

"Afterglow" is one of those rare movies that I enjoyed thinking about afterwards more than I did actually watching it.

Julie Christie and Nick Nolte give phenomenal performances as two adults engaged in naughty infidelities that have serious impacts on them and those they love. Director Alan Rudolph, a protégé of Robert Altman back when Altman was alive, gives the film a gauzy, dream-like quality that makes it stick in the mind long after you've watched it. The ending especially I found to be unnerving and haunting.

Christie received her third Best Actress Academy Award nomination and her first since "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" 26 years earlier.

Grade: B+

Boy, how does a turkey like this get made? Don't people get embarrassed any more? Actually the sets are fabulous, the apartment where the young couple lives is breathtaking _ too bad the actors have to be in the way so much. But the rest of it, the tired lines, the off-the-wall performances are sooooo pathetic. What is it with directors casting Nick Nolte as the big macho seducer? He looks like an old bag of gravel. His hair in this is a riot: draws all your attention when he's on the screen. But I do get it: he's playing the part that Kris Kristofferson used to play in Alan Rudolph pics. HEY, GOOD CASTING!!!

Afterglow is one of the best films of 1997. Julie Christie has been away too long. With the exception of her role as Gertrude in the 1996 version of Hamlet, I can't recall such a performance in years, and she radiates pure magic in this one. Nick Nolte is always at his best in the smaller, independent films and his portrayal in Afterglow is nothing short of brilliant. So, why isn't it available on laserdisc or DVD?

Let's look at this straight in the eyes: there are good sides to this pic. You get to see Julie Christie in a recent film, you get to see Montréal as an imaginary place. You get to see Nick Nolte. Now The bad news: this film is rotten, unlikely, pretentious and boring. Very boring.

Dreadful puns. Unbearable middle-class, underwritten archness. Acting, script that jars even more mercilessly once you realize they're not elements of an avant-garde distanciation strategy. Probably the only film I've ever seen that elicited sheer untrammeled loathing at every moment of viewing, usually bad films only evoke a mild bemusement and wondering when it'll be over, an expectation that it may improve. Compare with meeting someone who fills you with such futility and tedium after the first few words of conversation that you just walk away from them with no excuses or explanations. This film is that person.

tedious, irritating schlock.A pristine 'chamber piece' of fatuous complacency. The 1st 20 min came with such an undertow of nauseous inertia, life flashing before eyes, etc, that didn't stick with it. Maybe should watch it again? Do they all get blown up in the end?