☆ ½
The
Neon Demon (2016) – N. W. Refn
Pretentious, ponderous, puerile (OK, I
stole that from Glenn Kenny in the NY Times), and pointlessly provocative. Nicolas Winding Refn turns out to be just
another poseur trying to affect some cool by needlessly using sex and violence in
a film that could have been made by someone on drugs, but probably was intended
for viewers on some heavy drugs, presumably the kind that interrupt cognitions
of any sort. Because, yes, there is no
real plot here. Or let’s put it this way
– the movie starts off with the beginnings of a story, with poor Elle Fanning
arriving in LA to become a model, wide-eyed, impossibly young (16 in reality),
and ready for exploitation. She meets
people, goes to parties, gets yelled at by brutish Keanu Reeves, joins an
agency, makes enemies and then things fall apart, get weird and weirder and
pretty well offensive until the end. To
try to pass the time, I imagined that Refn was trying to do a Dario Argento film
– after all, the ostentatious coloured lighting, occasional jolts of gory
violence, and somnambulistic acting are similar and the plot does fall by the
wayside in favour of psychedelic staged setpieces in both. Except Refn doesn’t have the imagination of
Argento (who lost his way after a handful of pictures when incoherence began to
dominate artistic value – Refn may be already there). Perhaps more upsetting is the way that The
Neon Demon seems to reference Kenneth Anger (Lucifer Rising, in particular)
with its odd triangle totem and hypnotic electronic score. If any of this sounds interesting, please don’t
be fooled – the film is mind-numbingly boring and senseless as well as
insulting on both the intellectual and moral level. Not worth your time.
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