I finally got around to watching The Neon Demon last night, the latest film by Danish filmmaker Nicholas Winding Refn. Full disclosure: His film Drive is one of my all time favorite movies. Like, Top Ten Status. Its '80s style soundtrack and incredible color-saturated visuals told a modern day, Los Angeles criminal world-set fairytale that brought Refn something close to mainstream prominence. I read somewhere that Refn referred to Drive as being like "The Breakfast Club, but where a guy gets his head crushed," or something like that, which is an off-the-cuff analysis that gets you somewhere in the proximity of what the film is like. Since then, Refn has gone on to make Only God Forgives, also set in the criminal world, this time in Bangkok, Thailand. It was greeted with a much more chilly reception by critics, still carrying Refn's trademark of minimal dialogue and beautiful visuals, but telling a troubling story of a mother and son's relationship. Both films starred Ryan Gosling, whom Refn has touted as his on-screen proxy.
But with The Neon Demon, Refn has returned to Los Angeles sans Gosling, casting Elle Fanning in the lead role as Jesse, a fresh-from-Middle-America teen looking to break into the brutal fashion industry. Her backstory (Both parents dead, no further details given) is razor-thin, and this film is ultimate style-over-substance, relying heavily on the visuals and given little attention to character development or plot. Essentially, the central plot device is that Jesse is a natural beauty, breaking into the vicious LA fashion industry full of vacuous, surgically enhanced models who would like nothing more than to see her dead. Turns out, that's exactly what happens, but the where and how lead this film down the path of campy '70s horror films, leading up to three shocking scenes (Also a trademark of Refn) that cap off an otherwise slow, plodding film.
It can't be said this film is as good as Drive, and it really doesn't stand up to Only God Forgives either. The main problem is both those films had great performances (Albert Brooks in Drive, Kristen Scott Thomas in Only God Forgives) that gave them dramatic heft. Much has been made of Ryan Gosling's reserved, largely silent performances in those film, and it really only worked because Brooks and Scoot served as sinister foils to his blank canvas, their black-hearted motivations pushing up against his good intentions, to thrilling effect.
In The Neon Demon, things are more ambiguous, but it doesn't end up assisting the power of the film. Jesse knows she's beautiful, and as the story unfolds she becomes more willing to wield that fact against those who would see her fall. Jena Malone plays Ruby, a makeup artist infatuated with Jesse, or that is, right up until Jesse refuses to sleep with her. At that point all bets are off, and Ruby and two other rival models murder Jesse and eat her. So the film ends up being a kind of vampire fantasy tale, a literal and blunt analogy for an industry that is vampiric by an stretch of the imagination. The rest of the film is basically really cool looking shots of fashion models and Los Angeles. Keanu Reeves shows up, stunt-cast as a seedy hotel manager, which is probably one of the single most questionable casting choices I've ever seen, especially since Refn made incredible casting choices across the board in both Drive and Only God Forgives.
What The Neon Demon adds up to, if anything, to is going to be debated for a long time, and the same can be said about Only God Forgives, also a heavily misunderstood film. For my money, it's an offering of the gorgeous visuals of Refn's last two films, but lacks any kind of actual story, let alone a compelling one. The beauty of the film, like its characters, only runs skin deep.
No comments:
Post a Comment