The Neon Demon: Nicolas Winding Refn and his supermodel cannibals
The Neon Demon: Nicolas Winding Refn and his supermodel cannibals

The Neon Demon: Nicolas Winding Refn and his supermodel cannibals
Sex, blood, envy, primal instincts, necrophilia arrive in competition at Cannes 69. In a thriller without limits. booed

When shooting a movie it is fun as hell, and it shows. Provocative, irreverent, exaggerated, Nicolas Winding Refn is a mature author with his perfectly recognizable style.

The Neon Demon, in competition at the 69th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, is his first film totally feminine, with a harem of actresses of breathtaking beauty and uncommon charisma led by Elle Fanning and good Jena Malone. “In a film, the acting is everything: try to pay attention to every single detail, supervisions photography and set design, but if the performances of the actors are not convincing you take it and throw it,” said the director, proud of the choice of his protagonist. “Elle and ‘really very good, I’ve never met anyone like her.”

The film portrays an emerging model of sixteen with that “something more” that makes it special in the eyes of all, by the strictest photographers the most demanding stylists, make up to the lesbian artist (Malone, in fact) that he falls in love at first glance.

Rivalry and female attraction run hand in hand, in the unfolding of a thriller splatter colors that intends to make fun of the fashion world’s obsession with beauty and power, abuse of cosmetic surgery and the fierce competition between models .

The excess is the rule, together with the form and substance of the film. Cannibalism, necrophilia, whole naked: everything is permitted, everything is on display. So Refn: “The creativity of each of us harbored a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: When you create can exercise and practice all your desires, fetishes, things that images and in reality you can not do.” But yes to the movies, and you can be watching. Then the public will react in various ways: to press screenings in Cannes, in the meantime, the film was fischiatissimo and underappreciated.

At the end of check he credits the dedication to his wife, Liv Corfixen, author of a documentary about him. “I owe a lot to my wife are deeply dependent on her, are what they are because of her. Before meeting her I was too self-destructive. ” Curious, it was the feminine beauty to save him: “I am surrounded every day by the beauty of women: my wife, my daughters, actresses. In this film I wanted to tell the teenager that inhabits the soul of every human being, women as well as men. ”

Sex, blood, homoerotic passion, violation of corpses, Refn does not stop at nothing and ends up signing something of a hybrid, which is exactly half between a hopeless mess and an unlikely masterpiece. The rule trash alongside targeted directorial choices, the unintentional comedy dampens a substantial tension and palpable, the skill of the actresses stride with the tight space left to the actors much wasted / sacrificed (Keanu Reeves Karl Glusman, already seen in Love).

The rest is pure hedonistic taste for staging, with make-up, lighting and costumes by excessive colors, hyperbole scattered everywhere, no way to measure.

All the fault of Elia Kazan: “I met him twenty-five years – says Refn – He said, ‘Whatever you say, you make a film in your own way. Do not listen to anyone, no part of the system ‘. And so I continue to make my way to the cinema, never cover my films: once shot does not interest me. “