★ ★ ★ ½ ☆
Nicolas Winding Refn accidentally completes Joseph Kosinski’s
“Beautifully empty” trilogy (see TRON:
Legacy and Oblivion) with this savagely gorgeous and
astutely aimless…horror? Drama? Satire? The
Neon Demon could be easily labelled as all three, or neither. Elle Fanning stars as
Jesse, a shy adolescent model who arrives in L.A. with hopes of making it big in
an industry renowned for mercilessly chewing up and spitting out thousands like
her. In the words of Perturbator, “She is young, she is beautiful, she is next”.
But there’s something different about Jesse: unlike her peers, she requires no
plastic surgery or even makeup to achieve the effortless impeccability they
strive so desperately for. Alessandro Nivola’s fashion designer describes her
as “a diamond in a sea of glass” in the presence of jealous rivals Gigi and
Sarah.
His compliment can also be applied to the film itself, but
for a whole different reason: unlike the natural phenomenon of a precious
gemstone to which Jesse’s beauty is compared, it has been expertly manufactured
and precision-tooled to a mirror shine. While the vapid characters and empty
script seem a natural extension of the world they occupy, the superior sound
and vision are a wondrously artificial veneer. The respective scores to Blade Runner and Under the Skin have had a one night stand after watching The Guest, giving birth to Cliff
Martinez’masterful soundscape. Rivers of warbling synths are interspersed with
spine-tingling electronic shivers, complimented exquisitely by Natasha Braier’s
cinematography. Every frame carries the colour and geometry of a Chvrches album
cover dipped in fresh blood, with bursts of lens flare-borne prisms to make
J.J. Abrams soil himself.
In this respect, and in the bitter, sniping dialogue of her would-be
cohorts, the film echoes the vain fetishizing of Jesse’s presence, revelling in
the superficial desire for visual perfection. Fanning gives Jesse just the
right level of shoe-gazing timidity for every moment she’s not in the spotlight,
before her posture suddenly unfurls, her eyes and mouth sharpening as the
camera flashes begin to bounce off her damask skin.
Jena Malone is skin-strippingly malevolent as Jesse’s makeup
artist, Ruby, and Abbey Lee as Sarah acts everyone off the screen with her eyes
alone in one of the films tensest moments: while Jesse is the centrepiece of
the scene (rehearsing a catwalk for the designers), Sarah's defeat is depicted
only by the echoing gunshot of high heels and the acid tears in her eyes.
“Why have sour milk
when you can have fresh meat?” she asks. Though many have already noted a lack
of actual meat to feast on here, it’s not the insufficient, nay, non-existent
substance that pulls the film below sublime, but the pacing: like a fashion student
who hands in their superbly-mounted portfolio a week late, there’s no sense of
urgency to be found until the jaw-dropping, stomach-curdling dénouement; a
sequence which is just about as unwarrantedly enjoyable as guilty pleasures can
get.
Perhaps I’ve been too fully indoctrinated by Hollywood
editing that caters to attention deficiency, but I found great swathes of The Neon Demon (as I did with Refn’s Drive and Only God Forgives) tortuously slow and almost reliably uninvolving.
Regardless of the many pulled punches and unusually justified superficiality, the
director’s trademark distance remains: you can look, but you can’t touch.
