The Neon Demon

Con­sid­er the strange case of the ​“Blood Count­ess”, a 16^th-cen­tu­ry Hun­gar­i­an noblewoman/​serial killer who bathed in the blood of her vic­tims – 650 ser­vant girls – in the vain pur­suit of eter­nal youth. Was she a witch? A vam­pire? Or sim­ply a deranged soul with an insa­tiable lust for human flesh? Her extreme beau­ty reg­i­men cer­tain­ly cap­tured the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion, most notably influ­enc­ing the Broth­ers Grimm and Bram Stok­er. But no. Like all good folk tales, the leg­end of Eliz­a­beth Bátho­ry de Ecsed has mutat­ed over time, the details embell­ished and twist­ed and drained of nuance.

Apoc­ryphal tales have long been a source of inspi­ra­tion for writer/​director Nico­las Wind­ing Refn, Denmark’s very own Prince of Dark­ness. His last two films, 2011’s Dri­ve and 2013’s Only God For­gives, were pulse-quick­en­ing neo-noirs that com­bined ele­ments of fairy tale, fan­ta­sy and Amer­i­can pulp into height­ened, hyper-stylised real­i­ties. Refn’s lat­est and best, The Neon Demon, is the cul­mi­na­tion of his decades-long fas­ci­na­tion with human nature in its dark­est, most destruc­tive form. It is – pre­dictably, reli­ably – a gor­geous, gris­ly work which holds a (van­i­ty) mir­ror up to mod­ern society’s cor­rod­ed moral core.

If you’ve glimpsed the trail­er or any pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als, you’ll already be famil­iar with its strik­ing open­ing shot: a young mod­el laid out across an ornate sofa, its arched cor­nu­copia-arms sup­port­ing her del­i­cate, still head while expos­ing a deep cut run­ning across her throat. Even before the cam­era pulls back to reveal that this fetishised scene is in fact part of an elab­o­rate­ly staged pho­to shoot, there is some­thing curi­ous­ly spe­cious about it. You sit there scan­ning the blood- and glit­ter-flecked details, try­ing to dis­cern their hid­den mean­ing. Then it hits you.

The wicked die young. That’s not a tagline; it’s a mis­sion state­ment. Of course, Refn isn’t one to ped­dle such hokey Old Tes­ta­ment wis­dom. At least not before dis­sect­ing it slow­ly, sur­gi­cal­ly, in order to exam­ine whether that wicked­ness is innate or whether it is symp­to­matic of cor­rupt­ed inno­cence. Puri­ty and phys­i­cal per­fec­tion are dom­i­nant themes in The Neon Demon, yet despite being set in Los Ange­les against the back­drop of the fash­ion world, this is not a point­ed satire of any con­sumer or enter­tain­ment indus­try. Instead Refn has served up a scathing com­men­tary on our image-obsessed cul­ture, a feel­ing rein­forced by the film’s most potent line: ​“Beau­ty isn’t every­thing… it’s the only thing.”

A pic­ture of fresh-faced nubil­i­ty, Jesse (Elle Fan­ning) arrives in Los Ange­les a small-town girl with big dreams. She’s 16; wide-eyed and, as we soon learn, very dan­ger­ous. An oppor­tune meet­ing with Christi­na Hen­dricks’ no-bull­shit tal­ent agent con­firms what we already know: Jesse is going to be great. Fame beck­ons. All she needs now is the right kind of expo­sure – but it’s what she’s exposed to that seals her fate. Wher­ev­er she goes Jesse can’t help but be noticed. She meets a boy, Dean (Karl Glus­man), who shows her the city and promis­es to keep things pla­ton­ic when Jesse reveals that she is under­age. Despite his hon­est inten­tions, Dean strug­gles to keep the wolf from the door. Oth­ers put up even weak­er resistance.

On her first job Jesse is befriend­ed by a make-up artist named Ruby (Jena Mal­one). Ini­tial­ly Ruby assumes the role of big sis­ter, bring­ing Jesse into her clique while mak­ing a point to deflect the cat­ty remarks and haz­ing tac­tics of mod­els Gigi (Bel­la Heath­cotte) and Sarah (Abbey Lee). Both have been around long enough to recog­nise what Jesse has, not to men­tion the threat she pos­es to their respec­tive careers. ​“Who wants sour milk when you can get fresh meat?” observes Sarah. But more than any­thing, both girls are acute­ly aware of the fact that what makes Jesse spe­cial – the thing they most crave – is not skin-deep but some­thing abstract and ephemer­al. Some­thing they will nev­er have. Some­thing they can nev­er ful­ly take from her. Not that it stops them trying.

As with Ryan Gosling’s schiz­o­phrenic wheel­man in Dri­ve, Jesse’s spir­i­tu­al meta­mor­pho­sis dove­tails with a sharp tonal shift which plunges us into murki­er, more explic­it­ly vio­lent waters. Sun­set meet cutes give way to strobe-lit BDSM clubs. Big cats, lunar cycles and pink tri­an­gles play their part. A stom­ach-turn­ing yet odd­ly sen­su­al inci­dent in a mor­tu­ary will like­ly ran­kle some view­ers, espe­cial­ly giv­en the offend­ing character’s sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. (Inci­den­tal­ly, kudos to Cody Renee for what is sure­ly the most com­mit­ted demon­stra­tion of corpse act­ing ever cap­tured on film.) Anoth­er par­tic­u­lar­ly grim sequence fea­tures an act of scis­sors-based self-muti­la­tion that would make Lars von Tri­er wince.

Is it sim­ply the case that Refn can’t resist indulging his ego while admin­is­ter­ing shots of cheap tit­il­la­tion? It’s true he has a habit of deploy­ing sex­u­al­ly-charged flash grenades that seem designed, first and fore­most, to stun you into sub­mis­sion. It’s also true that he gets a kick out of elic­it­ing pre­cise­ly this reac­tion – say by hav­ing his pro­tag­o­nist beat anoth­er man to mulch in the close con­fines of an ele­va­tor, or anoth­er crawl into the open bel­ly of his fresh­ly dis­em­bow­eled moth­er. But it would be remiss to reject The Neon Demon as a work of emp­ty provo­ca­tion. Because as you start to digest the vis­cer­al images stream­ing forth from Refn’s sub­con­scious onto the screen, whether you’re aroused or repulsed (and these respons­es are by no means mutu­al­ly exclu­sive), there’s nev­er the sense that he is out pure­ly to sat­is­fy his own impulses.

It’s telling that this is the first ​‘NWR film’ to be told pri­mar­i­ly from a female per­spec­tive. Even more so that Refn pays trib­ute to his wife, Liv Cor­fix­en, in the clos­ing cred­its. That it was shot by a woman, Natasha Braier, and co-writ­ten by two more, Mary Laws and Pol­ly Sten­ham, are key fac­tors also. Con­se­quent­ly – cru­cial­ly – this is not a film about the tri­als of wom­an­hood refract­ed through a patri­ar­chal prism. And yet, The Neon Demon is a more trans­par­ent­ly per­son­al film than per­haps we’ve come to expect from Refn, so much as it speaks direct­ly to his inner­most anx­i­eties and exis­ten­tial tensions.

In our sen­sa­tion­al inter­view with the direc­tor, he reveals that he always want­ed to make a film about the 16-year-old girl inside of him. Well, he found the per­fect alter ego in Elle Fan­ning. Giv­en that she’s been act­ing since the age of three and pre­vi­ous­ly impressed in JJ Abrams’ Super 8, Sofia Coppola’s Some­where and Sal­ly Potter’s Gin­ger & Rosa, the 18 year old can hard­ly be described as an unknown quan­ti­ty at this point (in that sense Abbey Lee is the big find). It’s just that Fanning’s per­for­mance here is on a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent lev­el to any­thing she’s done before. It is a demand­ing role, one that requires real guile and guts, and to that end the free­ness with which she casts off her bub­bly, butter-wouldn’t‑melt per­sona is pret­ty remark­able. Even when things turn seri­ous­ly NSFW and Jesse’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is exploit­ed – specif­i­cal­ly dur­ing a high-end shoot with an intim­i­dat­ing male pho­tog­ra­ph­er and lat­er when con­front­ed by Keanu Reeves’ preda­to­ry motel man­ag­er, Hank – she appears total­ly unfazed. Lib­er­at­ed, even.

If Fan­ning is the film’s lifeblood, then it’s Refn him­self who pro­vides its unerr­ing emo­tion­al cen­tre. Anoth­er avail­able read­ing is that this is Refn’s poi­son valen­tine to Los Ange­les: the place that once lured him with its bright arti­fi­cial lights and per­pet­u­al sun, only to chew him up and spit him out fol­low­ing the com­mer­cial fail­ure of his 2003 film Fear X; and, lat­ter­ly, where he splits his time between his native Copen­hagen. Los Ange­les – and in Refn’s case Hol­ly­wood – sub­sists on its own mythol­o­gy, and Refn expos­es this by chip­ping away at the con­ceal­er-smoth­ered cracks at the city’s sur­face. Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Val­ley of the Dolls and Dario Argento’s Sus­piria are obvi­ous touch­stones. There are hat-tips to far weird­er, more obscure exploita­tion fare, too. But The Neon Demon is always, unequiv­o­cal­ly a Nico­las Wind­ing Refn film. We wouldn’t have it any oth­er way.