Review: The Neon Demon
Like for a lot of people I'm sure, I first became aware of Nicholas Winding Refn when Drive was released and got hailed as one of the best movies of 2011, to my mind the best film of the 2010s to date. Looking into Refn's career though, there is a pattern to how he approached films, outside of Drive most of his film are very divisive and controversial. But to an extent that is exactly what Refn wants, he doesn't want everyone in the room to say that his film is a masterpiece, he wants half the people in the room to call it a masterpiece and the other half to call it absolute trash and let them both argue their points.
To that effect, Refn's latest, The Neon Demon, is admittedly his most accessible movie since Drive - in terms of narrative anyway - but it's also one of the most bizarre and confounding movies of the year that already has people split down the middle on what to make of it. Personally I fell into the love it camp.
The film finds 16 year old Jessie, a small-town girl living in a lonely world, come to L.A. from Georgia to be a model, noting that she's not talented by any means but she is pretty and can make money off pretty. During her first amateur shoot Jessie meets Ruby, a make-up artist, who introduces her to some of the other people in the industry including models Sarah and Gigi, both of whom take a dislike to the younger and prettier Jessie.
Later on, Jessie is signed on to a prestigious modelling company and shown the ropes, with Roby helping to guide her along the way. However it very quickly becomes apparent that Jessie has a natural modelling ability, something that photographers and designers alike start to take notice of. As the prestige and the acclaim slowly rise, Jessie soon finds herself falling into a dangerous personality trap where the cut-throat business threatens to destroy her.
I can't really go into too much more detail, partly for fear of spoilers because the last act of this film is just too out there for words and needs to be seen to believed. It's probably one of the bravest directorial choices of the modern age and what it has to say about the modelling industry will stick in your brain regardless of how you felt about the film as a whole. Mostly though it's because there's little else to say about the story, this is a story we've seen before about how a prestigious industry is actually full of thieves and back-stabber, but told through Refn's stylistic and horrific vision the film becomes something truly disturbing and yet utterly fascinating at the same time.
Acting was strong with supporting performances from Keanu Reeves as Hank, the owner of a run-down motel Jessie is staying at and perhaps the scummiest performance Reeves has had since The Gift. Christina Hendricks has a very small role as Roberta, head of the agency that hires Jessie but in her limited screen-time she gives a very 'devil's advocate' vibe to her as she pushes Jessie into her first steps in the industry.
Sarah and Gigi, played by Abbey Lee and Bella Heathcote respectively, are a very interesting pair. Both were up-and-comers like Jessie but both had been around for a lot longer and met a lot more people, clawing their way up the ladder, only to be knocked back down again by her arrival. Gigi is the more narcissistic one, having gone through several surgeries and cosmetic enhancements in search of perfect beauty she claims to be totally confident in herself. Instead her passive aggressive insults and put-upon smile are hiding a damaged little girl who is still looking for the ultimate answer in true beauty, despite the fact that her plastic surgery means she'll never find it. By contrast, Sarah is the much more emotionally open of the two, she has outbursts of violence when Jessie beats her without even trying. But where Gigi lets her insecurities envelop her, Sarah embraces hers and by the end she's transformed into something very different that what you might expect.
Jessie's only two friends in the world were Dean and Ruby. Dean, played by Karl Glusman, was an amateur photographer who took Jessie's first shots for her portfolio. For a while he seems to serve a romantic interest, even despite Jessie's young age he is attracted to her and her spirit, however he does get pushed to the sidelines once Jessie starts embracing the darkness, I would've liked a better ending to his storyline but his exit made sense. Jena Malone as Ruby though... fuck me this performance is something else, I doubt there is anyone else this year who will do what Malone does in this film. She pretty much steals the whole thing out from everyone, right from the start it's obvious that she has a crush on Jessie and her friendliness is a cloak for a more romantic interest, but even that peels away to something more sinister. I honestly don't want to go into any more detail because part of what makes Malone so good is the shock of what she's willing to do for this film, she is pretty damn incredible and deserving of some recognition for this.
Finally we have Elle Fanning as Jessie, now in all fairness Elle is a very beautiful woman which fits into the role from a visual standpoint, but she's also very young-looking, being 16 herself when the film was shot, which adds to the innocence of her character when she first enters the film. She comes across as vulnerable, lost, about to be eaten up by the big city and spat back out before she even knows what hit her. But what makes Elle so great is how absolute she makes her corruption, Jessie doesn't have any piece of her past to hold onto so her envelopment into the modelling industry is total and complete, it's a very slow twist of her character but once you see her embrace the darkness Jessie is no longer recognisable and yet Fanning makes it feel so natural, how easy she's able to turn form clueless newbie into fully-fledged vixen. This is a very adult role but Fanning has the confidence to pull it off and makes the film as a result.
One thing's for sure, Nicholas Winding Refn isn't about to let up on his style anytime soon. Yes the argument is there that Refn prefers style over substance but for anyone that's willing to let the style BE the substance then there is a very visually telling film. I mean this film is fuckin gorgeous, whether you love it or hate it the cinematography is spell-bounding, creating a mixture of dreamlike experiences and hellish encounters, scenes punctuated with an intense fusion or black and reds and blues create this nightmare which is just impossible to look away from. The whole film actually is Refn near enough forcing the audience to witness the beauty and the madness of the industry, most of the times both at once, in fact one of the recurring themes is the use of mirrors with a lot of shots including both the character and their reflection on-screen, sometimes even just the reflection. This film has a lot to say about the beauty industry and the use of mirrors indicate Refn holding the mirror up to the industry and focussing on its flaws and vices, at the same time though it creates something unnerving to the audience to witness. With Refn's stylistic direction he's able to mould his theme of the Impossible Beauty into some fantastic visual cues, from Jessie's first photo-shoot which turns from predatory exploitative piece where a scared and alone Jessie is forced to strip for a shoot into a sexually driven environment with Jessie taking the role of an Aphrodite type figure, to a runway show where Jessie hallucinates a sequence of events which visually showcase her final turn to the dark side.
The film makes for a very disturbed experience, part of that has to do with the INCREDIBLE soundtrack by Cliff Martinez which sounds like an unholy union of 80s synth and the Suspiria soundtrack to create one of the best scores of the year. But most of the time it's to do with Refn's ability with the camera, the way he plays with the lighting and the mood to build the audience into a sense of uncertainty and unease. This is classified as a horror film and it deserves the title, it doesn't do anything typically associated with horror until the ending but that growing sense of dread, that fear that drips out of every scene as Jessie is faced with jealousy, animosity, perversions, fear, violence and sexual deviancies . It's a horror but the horror is very recognisable and very beautiful, the demon of the title is an allegory but one that entices as much as it frightens.
If you're not on board with Refn's style then The Neon Demon will not change your mind and in indeed the film is not made for everyone, it's a sickeningly deranged picture that which openly fetishes violence and will absolutely disgust people who aren't prepared for it. But for those who are willing to give it that chance there is a fantastic film here that examines beauty standards between the young and natural and the old and bitter, the acting is fitting of the film's subtle tones with Fanning's slowly maturing Jessie and Malone's ballsy as hell Ruby making the most of the film's depravity and Refn's typical style being used to this amount of ugliness into the most beautiful film of the year.
I can't in all good conscience recommend this to everyone, but for me personally, this film delivered on every cylinder I wanted it to.
9/10