A handyman with marital problems meets a housewife with the same.<BR>&nbsp;

A handyman with marital problems meets a housewife with the same.

Arriving after Alan Rudolph`s previous effort Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle which seems by comparison a very brittle film, Afterglow is a pleasant surprise and full of full of compassion. Its characters are coincidentally linked .... Lucky Mann - Nick Nolte - has a tender, sad relationship with his wife Phyllis - Julie Christie. She`s a former B-movie star who reclines in her negligee watching reruns of her old movies. Lucky`s a handyman and he does more for the women he visits than fix their pipes. Lucky`s a ladies man, and Phyllis is aware of it even though she doesn`t want to know any details ... Marianne - Lara Flynn Boyle - is a frustrated yuppie, married to successful whiz kid Jeffry - Jonny Lee Miller. She`s desperate to have babies, he doesn`t want to know about it or her for that matter. But Lucky isn`t just a wham bam thank you mam sort of guy - he has a sensitive soul towards the women in his life ..... Rarely does Alan Rudolph let you come close to his characters, but with Afterglow he does. This is raw emotional territory he drags us through, to the extent that I ended up in floods of tears as Tom Waits sang \"Somewhere\" over the end credits. Rudolph wrote and directed. The film`s dominated by Julie Christie looking as involved and removed as she always has but with a patina of life on her that is so damned beautiful. Nolte seems to exert more energy as Lucky than he has in roles recently.... and this is really their story .... Lara Flynn Boyle and Jonny Lee Miller are almost plastic substitues in comparison but their pain is real too. I really like the territory explored in Afterglow, I loved the performances, I loved the way Rudolph has given the film to us ... I was really hoping to like this film, I`m so glad I did