Glitter and Grime


THE MORNING AFTER is a 1986 neon-candy-colored Hollywood thriller that beautifully encapsulates the mid-80s without being overly campy. Sidney Lumet directs it, and his serious cinema-verite style gets opened up to a glossy Southern California headspace, a cheery but sad backlot full of blank industrial buildings and pastel hairdresser condos. It's like Altman and DePalma having a deviously fun conversation. 

MORNING AFTER would be a great curiosity, but then there's Jane Fonda. She pushes the movie beyond its kitschy itch. As a frantic over-the-hill actress with a booze problem waking up in bed next to a bloody corpse, she navigates every scene with a twitchy but steely ache. She seems to understand both the plight and the triumph of being a nobody, but also she carries the murder plot along with her like a dreamy moldy minkstole. 

You feel everything through her determined but about-to-lose-it gaze. She's never been better and I think it has a lot to do with the melodramatic throwaway feel that informs both the story and the atmosphere of MORNING AFTER: it's both a B-movie and a tragic turn. Nonsense and breakthrough. Jane Fonda owns all the real estate. You really understand her greatness when it is ensconced in trashy sweet glitter and grime.  


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