High Contrast

Set in the Hollywood hills, where he spends much of his time, and the expansive Southwest, where he grew up, Tom Ford’s dark new thriller, Nocturnal Animals, is a mythic American story about passion and revenge. By John Powers. Photographed by Norman Jean Roy.

- John Powers

It’s a late-summer afternoon in Santa Fe, and Tom Ford is waiting for me outside the big wooden doors of his traditional adobe house, perched on a hill high above the countryside. “I like looking at the same view I’ve been looking at since I was a little kid,” says the designer/filmmaker, who was raised in this Southwestern city and still lives here part of the year with his husband (and partner of 30 years), the fashion writer Richard Buckley, and their four-year old son, Jack.

“I’m sorry for the heat. May I offer you something to drink?” he asks while ushering me into a large foyer. When I say yes, he stands at a small built-in wooden bar and begins preparing a glass of iced mineral water with a twist. As he finishes, he sighs—he’s spotted a tiny black speck floating amid the bubbles. He prepares another, only to sigh again—the lime slice, he says, looks too unappealing. He painstakingly squeezes a new slice into a prettier shape. When he finally hands me the glass, my drink looks like the Platonic ideal of a glass of sparkling water. As anyone who’s followed his work can tell you, Tom Ford likes things just so.

I’ve come to Santa Fe to discuss Ford’s new film, Noctur