The Neon Demon [Blu-ray]

First of all, this is a hard film to watch, but then again most of Refn’s films are. He is not an easy director to love. His films always have a hard art house feel about them with very limited scripts and storylines that don't so much offer themselves up to the audience, as need to be dragged out kicking and screaming.This film is visually stunning, yet as I said, it still doesn't make it easier to watch.This is a story about envy, jealousy, hatred even, corruption of the soul.This is essentially a Brothers Grimm fairy tale of the modern age. It’s dark, it’s nasty, the characters are two dimensional and reveal the shallowness of the modern world. There are no characters in this film who actually redeem humanity.The film is based around a young girl called Jesse played by Elle Fanning, she moves to LA to become a model. She is underaged and her agency is aware of this but simply tell her to lie and say she is 19, “always say your 19, 18 is too on the nose”. She meets Ruby played by Jena Malone who is a makeup artist, she takes Jesse under her wing, and the relationship ‘grows’ from there.Our other main characters are Gigi and Sarah played by Bella Heathcote and Abbey Lee respectively. Gigi is having every bit of surgery known to man in order to keep her looking beautiful and Sarah is concerned that she is too old for the business and that designers and photographers are always looking for the newest freshest meat on the market. Bella Heathcote looks the part but Abbey Lee is too stunningly beautiful for you to really connect with her doubts about her own appearance, or maybe that was just me.Some have moaned that the acting is wooden, but that’s the point. It is supposed to be like that, it needs to be like that for the characters to work.I saw this film after seeing Ghostbusters, I had the thought that this may be the day that I walk out of a movie, I didn’t, I didn’t even want to, in fact, I’m pleased I’ve seen both films. I didn’t like Drive, Refn’s film from 2011 which got rave reviews. I feel that a film should have more words than characters, and Drive didn’t seem to agree with that rather simple premise, Neon Demon on the other hand was probably harder to watch, but gave so much more in return.If you think you can stomach it, watch it.

I had heard a lot of good things about this film and having enjoyed Drive by the same director thought I'd buy the film. I have to say that I'm very glad that I did. It really concerns the current obsession with physical beauty and youth set, not coincidentally, I assume, in the capital of the superficial, Los Angeles. To write any more about the film, spoilers can't be avoided, you've been warned. Our protagonist Jesse, played by Elle Fanning, moves to Los Angeles to try to make it as a model. Her youth (she's 16 "but say you're 19 if anyone asks") and unsullied beauty immediately gets her noticed and she's quickly signed-up to a model agency and aces the first audition she goes to. Here she meets a make-up artist (Ruby, played by Jenna Malone) and they become friends. Later on, she and her boyfriend meet with a fashion designer in a bar where they are introduced to two older models Gigi and Sarah who, at 21, are on the cusp of being too old to continue modelling for much longer. The boyfriend makes the remark about beauty on the inside being more important than mere looks, and is pooh-poohed by the designer, at this point, Jesse embraces her new, narcissistic life and splits from her boyfriend. Jesse's career goes from strength-to-strength as designers and photographers are drawn to her beauty and freshness. Away from the glamour and bright lights, she is sleeping in a sleazy Motel run by an even sleazier Keanu Reeves which she finally leaves after hearing him rape the 13-year-old guest in the next room. She flees the motel and goes to the house (mansion really) that Ruby is house-sitting. There follows a scene where Ruby (who supplements her income by making-up corpses for an undertaker) performs a sex act with a (female) corpse. Ruby then tries to seduce Jesse, but is rebuffed. The next morning, Ruby, Gigi and Sarah kill Jesse and bathe in her blood and eat her (in an earlier scene I think it was Gigi who said something like if you eat someone who is beautiful, you become more beautiful yourself). Re-reading the above, the film does sound a little pervy, but at no point did I feel that this was the case. The modelling scenes are shot in very vivid primary colours and the actors and props posed in a very stylised fashion lending a sort of detachment from the happenings on screen to the viewer (much like Jesse's detachment from the rape being committed next door where she could have called the police). You only hear the rape, you see Jesse's murder, but not the cannibalism (although you do see Ruby in a bath of blood) so there is little voyeurism involved. I have omitted to mention a number of scenes due to time, but these are not superfluous to the film. This is a daring film tackling our youth/celebrity/beauty-obsessed culture by retelling the story of Narcissus in the present day, the acting is uniformly superb and it is shot perfectly. The score is excellent, never intruding itself on the action. If I could have given it 4.5 stars, I would, but I am stingy with 5-stars, so 4 it is.