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.

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?

"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+