The Morning After

I was entertained. The murder mystery isn't going to impress anyone since you can count the number of suspects on one hand with a couple fingers left over. But the characters are interesting and are brought to life well by capable actors. Bridges' character is what would be termed today "casually racist." Fonda's character keeps bringing it up too despite getting further involved with the guy. It's kind of fascinating honestly. Both actors do well making you care about people that, on paper, seem pretty unlikable. Raul Julia steals every scene he's in.

I've come to appreciate Sidney Lumet's later work more as I get older. Not saying you have to be older to like his films but in my case it worked out that way. He wasn't afraid of complex characters, even offensive ones. It's hard not to respect that as we get closer to Demolition Man's vision of the future every year.

This film most closely resembles the Film Noir of the 40's & 50's in feel and form. The only difference is the open light of LA on the Thanksgiving weekend. The scene at the airport communicates how much this City (LA) is a city where everyone comes from somewhere else. The great evacuation scene at LAX leaves lonely people like Fonda and Bridges behind, and is meant to explain the relative vacant feel of the town throughout the rest of the film.

The bright autumn light and vacant cityscape during the film is a surrealistic version of LA, which even a native like me seldom gets to see. The rest of the film is much like a "B" film noir picture, where we wonder (but not seriously) whether Jane's character may have actually done the deed in a drunken haze, and whether the Cop's will be able to get the right killer.

I love this film, not only for the scenes of LA, but for the good suspense generated by the unseen evil lurking in the all too limited shadows.

I Think I´ll never see again the city of Los Angeles so beautiful like in this movie. The sky is so blue that the color seems made in a laboratory. The shining California sun gives a very lighted look to all the scenes filmed on street locations. Jane Fonda, playing an alcoholic but also a sensual lady, is brilliant too and so sexy as she was in 1971, when she won the Oscar for "Klute". You´ll enjoy watching "The Morning After", if you love LA, the sunny days and ladies like Jane Fonda.

The Morning After opens with an extraordinarily effective scene prototypical of director Sidney Lumet's pared-down building of tension. As Jane Fonda crawls out of bed, we sense her hangover, one of those inordinately miserable mornings when nothing about you is sufficiently functional, and we also sense how accustomed she's become to these mornings as she is not only passably functional but also recognizes herself in the mirror and indeed spills some gin into a glass, speculating about the guy in her bed. Who is he? She doesn't comprehend the true gravity of her predicament until she turns him onto his back. She sees no cop is going to buy her story, so she attempts to remove all the evidence of her stopover. And then she rambles back out, into the intense Los Angeles light. And in a shot from high overhead, she seems like a lab rat, ensnared in some sort of a experiment. It's so well directed that we almost forget how preposterous it is to think this frame-up would ever work. This beginning promises an exceptional thriller. Alas, The Morning After never matches its initial potential, not as a thriller, at least. The narrative has some gaping disparities in it, and thrillers need to be impermeable. This one chalks various elements up to pure coincidence, the ultimate motives are flimsy at best and the fact that the body keeps reappearing like a cartoon or a take-off on The Trouble with Harry brings the movie too close to qualifying as '80s schlock for one to become seriously absorbed in the plot. But The Morning After merits a look anyhow, owing to the characters that it cultivates, and the performances of Fonda and Jeff Bridges in the two leads. She plays an alcoholic actress long past her heyday. He plays an ex-cop who happens to be fixing his car right where she topples into his back seat and implores him to get her away from there, quick. Bridges stays in a petty, manufactured shed, where he repairs appliances. This is all Fonda needs. She's a veteran of the live-fast-die-young subscription, her friends all bartenders and drag queens, her separated husband Raul Julia the most upmarket hairdresser in Beverly Hills. Nevertheless Bridges is reliable and sound, and she could do with a friend. Naturally it's axiomatic that they fall in love. The plot of The Morning After is not nearly as well captured or interesting as the day-by-day grinds of these characters. Actually, I can picture a movie that would omit the murder and just trail the genuine human development between Fonda and Bridges. The thriller filler isn't needed, although given that they used it, couldn't they have made it credible? The entire murder plot gets such slapdash treatment that perhaps I oughtn't have been startled by the big scene in which the killer's exposed. I've seen innumerable revelations in innumerable thrillers, but seldom one as transparent as this one, where the surprises are just announced in an improbable monologue. Indeed, the fact that nearly every opinion I've heard or read of this film seems unanimous in terms of James Hicks' script, including mine, even down to the 'It starts off well but then it gets really forced and jerry-built' gist, it seems pretty clear-cut what makes the film not quite work, though it'd be a misstep to write this movie off simply because the story is so rickety. It's worth making an allowance for due to the performances. Fonda and Bridges are superb in the film, and their rapport, founded on skeletons in the cupboard, bitterness and ulterior motives, gets especially remarkable. They create tangible unspoken feelings together, and they have some dialogue that feels more alive than most starry-eyed chatter in the movies. Before the schmaltzy final scene, not even close to prototypical of Lumet, there's a single shot in which all Bridges and Fonda do is face each other, and we know, and fee, that they want to have sex with each other. It's just energy, and it works wonders. I also admire how Lumet reinforces every color. Living in Los Angeles is part of the debilitating influence on the character played by Jane Fonda. All color is exaggerated: red redder, blue filters, orange hazes. He creates an L.A. comprised of vast flat surfaces of pastels and aggressively sunlit exposed areas. He traps the inebriated Fonda on this landscape like a helplessly insignificant insect sought for squashing by unknown feet, and the imagery makes the whole first hour of the movie much more ominous than it merits. Too bad they couldn't have take steps with the script.

It's a shame the filmmakers decided to make this a murder mystery, because the "mystery" is the only bad part of the film. Fonda and Bridges are both terrific, as usual, and the story of their meeting and falling in love along with the moral rebirth that love sparked in both would have made a fantastic movie. Jeff Bridges is the USA's stealth great actor: he quietly nails every role without an ounce of flash. His chemistry with Jane Fonda (hell, he has chemistry with every actress he's ever costarred with) is the best reason to watch this. Unfortunately, the heart of the plot is a lackluster murder/conspiracy story which undermines the rest. It takes "The Morning After" from a "must see" to a "see if there's nothing better."