Nicolas Winding Refn may annoy as much as it exhilarates. After the Drive has been complicated to manage with Only God Forgives , which has calmed many people with his extremism formal and narrative. THE NEON DEMON is not expected to reconcile the detractors of the man as it appears as a real extension in the form, although it is more interesting when it is after the entire filmography of Danish director and because the work of plastic enters into osmosis with the subject.
Jesse arrives in Los Angeles with the ambition to become a model professional. She is beautiful. A little too beautiful in the eyes of other girls who see in it a threat to labour…
If the film of Refn until then was mostly male, THE NEON DEMON is a diving rattling in a female world where men are reduced to objects of ridicule (Keanu Reeves) figure or figures that we give up (Karl Glusman) – he is the one in which a beacon of humanity appears. Completed the women we abandoned, one who is a child and that we give up, the one who is faced with a closed door, that we prefer to let go for the benefit of his mother… Nicolas Winding Refn replays a scene from Drive during a trip by night in love but it changes the configuration of the roles. The boy is no longer the male figure desired and reassuring, it is up to him to run behind the girl. You might think that it is simply a question of repeating visual to surf on the success of the sumptuous feature film, with which he got a prize from the stage. Except that no, Refn re-uses cleverly this quote in the awareness of its own movie theatre, what he created and the imagery of which he is now the guarantor. Great foot-of-nose to those who are in constant expectation of seeing him remake a film the same and who does not see his film through this unique work.
Nicolas Winding Refn infiltrates the world of fashion and is a topic at the height of its formality, allowing excess. This world of superficiality infects the film : everything becomes over-worked, and the composition of plans, passing by the light or the camera movements. It looks like Nicolas Winding Refn has fun with its premise of a narrative, as if he had found an excuse that is valid to do whatever he wanted and you can’t blame him. The first tracking shot of the film shows that he plays the aesthetic and that, even if he should find it beautiful, it also needs a good laugh to feed us brazenly effects supported. Result is a movie much less heavy thatOnly God Forgives as the treatment seems appropriate to the subject but also because everything is bathed in the comic. The figures for secondary (owner of a motel, a designer) that run through the film we offer many opportunities to snicker – the features are supported. The building is a little too serious, that was Only God Forgives , we assommait, Refn knows what he was criticizing earlier, and took the opportunity to have some fun. The last act plunges into the grotesque, and humor acid, by a sudden wave effects bloody. We are promised on paper a film of vampires/cannibals and you have to wait for the horror gangrene of the story. All of a sudden, the film trips entirely, to the point of verging on bad taste at the scene of the morgue.
THE NEON DEMON is a beautiful balance between form and content Click To Tweet
THE NEON DEMON is a wonderful showcase, blazing by now, that you aspire in his story of initiation for us to drown in a nightmare under neon lights. The discourse on the world of fashion is nothing new to tell us (the dehumanization, the cult of the physical) but the wintry contemplations offered by Nicolas Winding Refn , are illuminated by the presence prodigious a Elle Fanning troubling. Difficult not to see in his character a certain reflection of the director in the way in which he finds himself suddenly subject to the admiration, to the point of transforming into a monster. Exactly as the Danish, propelled on the front of the stage with the Drive and that the downward spiral of the acclamation took the opportunity to mutate his cinema towards a more extreme, resulting in Only God Forgives. And the last act is a great metaphor for the current state of cinema sound. When we eat, the/the small(e) prodigy, the result can vary from one person to another : the full satisfaction or indigestion. This is exactly the extreme reaction possible at the end of THE NEON DEMON. Has the image of these girls that want to conquer the catwalks in bulk and their opponents, Nicolas Winding Refn wants to conquer the film-based tracking shots and neon lights. A program that we enjoy, at the highest point.
Published on may 20, 2016.
Maxime Bedini
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