Dis­cov­er the director’s cut of Olivi­er Assays’ Demonlover

In the cut­throat world of busi­ness, Diane de Monx (Con­nie Nielsen) is in con­trol. We see her, in the open­ing scene of Olivi­er Assayas’ Demonlover, seat­ed in first class on a plane besides Hen­ri-Pierre Volf (Jean-Bap­tiste Malartre), the CEO of the pow­er­ful multi­na­tion­al Volf Cor­po­ra­tion. Although she is tak­ing dic­ta­tion from Volk, Diane is nonethe­less in the ascen­dant – lit­er­al­ly a high-fly­er, not hav­ing to sit in econ­o­my class like the sec­re­tary Elise Lip­sky (Chloë Sevi­gny), and about to replace her imme­di­ate boss Karen (Dominique Rey­mond) after sly­ly drug­ging her water.

Diane is pok­er-faced and impen­e­tra­ble – an ​“ice queen”, as one char­ac­ter puts it – pre­sent­ing a cool gloss that gives away very lit­tle of what is going on under­neath. Her own inner desires – her les­bian­ism – remain con­cealed from oth­ers. She seems to fit right in with all the slick, reflec­tive sur­faces that make up her work­ing envi­ron­ments: inter­change­able office meet­ing rooms and upmar­ket hotels around the world, sug­ges­tive of anony­mous pro­fes­sion­al­ism and deper­son­alised success.

Volk is nego­ti­at­ing a deal to become major­i­ty share­hold­er of Japan­ese com­pa­ny TokyoAnime, and assigns Diane to han­dle the con­tract and to choose which of two Amer­i­can pornog­ra­phy dis­trib­u­tors – Demonlover or Man­ga­tron­ics – should get the inter­na­tion­al rights to TokyoAnime’s hen­tai. Diane is also a dou­ble agent, secret­ly work­ing for one of the rival bid­ding companies.

It is a game of decep­tion and seduc­tion that Diane is play­ing, gain­ing the trust of the big boss, always seem­ing on top of things, and both attract­ing and intim­i­dat­ing even her expe­ri­enced col­league Hervé Le Millinec (Charles Berling). As soon as Demonlover’s two nego­tia­tors (Gina Ger­shon, Edwin Ger­ard) see Diane in action at the con­fer­ence table, they imme­di­ate­ly want to head­hunt her for their own busi­ness – and they know that they will need to find a way to ​‘con­trol’ her too.

‘Con­trol’ is a recur­ring word in Demonlover, cap­tur­ing the pow­er dynam­ics of a film whose office pol­i­tics play out like the S&M of Steven Shainberg’s Sec­re­tary (released in the same year), only with nei­ther the com­e­dy nor the romance. Right from the open­ing sequence on the plane, there are reg­u­lar­ly screens vis­i­ble in the film’s back­grounds that dis­play mov­ing images of vio­lence or sex­u­al vio­lence – screens that, if noticed at all by the film’s char­ac­ters, are viewed with dispassion.

By enter­ing a part­ner­ship with TokyoAnime and hold­ing meet­ings with Demonlover, the Volf Cor­po­ra­tion is agree­ing to traf­fic in pre­cise­ly such imagery. TokyoAnime’s hen­tai ped­dle fan­tasies of rape, objec­ti­fy­ing and com­mod­i­fy­ing their car­toon hero­ines as mere bod­ies and ori­fices avail­able for mon­strous entry, to please the pay­ing view­er. ​“We’re walk­ing a fine line, a very fine line,” as Volf tells Diane, ​“But we remain with­in the lim­its of the law.”

This means that if, as rumours have it, Demonlover are also behind the strict­ly ille­gal real-time inter­ac­tive SM web­site The Hell­fire Club, Volf Cor­po­ra­tion must be removed from any asso­ci­a­tion with it. Yet as Diane inves­ti­gates the web­site, and sees for her­self live footage of on-demand tor­ture being met­ed out live to cap­tive women in fetish cos­tumes, the film’s metaphors – all the inequal­i­ties and masks and manip­u­la­tions of the work­place – are giv­en a very real, far more alarm­ing form, reveal­ing the screen from its oth­er side.

Diane is very good at both her job for Volf and her duplic­i­tous mis­sion for her oth­er employ­er, but she is also sur­round­ed by oth­ers play­ing sim­i­lar games, and the grad­ual loss of her char­ac­ter­is­tic con­trol, as she is sub­ject­ed to humil­i­a­tion, vio­la­tion and worse, grim­ly expose to view the lack of real female pow­er or agency in a world where boy­ish men pull the strings and direct the gaze. Diane, it turns out, is also com­mod­i­fi­able, also reducible to the sta­tus of an object, also a mere play­thing for casu­al, indif­fer­ent, bare­ly engaged users.

This is what makes Assayas’ neo-noir, criss-cross­ing from Paris to Tokyo to the Mex­i­can hin­ter­land, morph slow­ly into a very adult, intel­lec­tu­al pre­cur­sor to Eli Roth’s Hos­tel, as the film’s clean, sleek sur­faces give way to an under­ly­ing mess of ugli­ness and depravity.

Chore­o­graphed to the jet-lagged jan­gle of Son­ic Youth’s gui­tar work, Demonlover uncov­ers the human mis­ery behind cold com­merce, and the har­row­ing real­i­ty beyond male fan­ta­sy. It is a deeply prob­ing work that holds up a mir­ror not only to the work­ings of mod­ern glob­alised cap­i­tal­ism, but also to itself and its own pre­sen­ta­tions of sex­u­al vio­lence. Our enjoy­ment, as con­sumers, of the film’s chal­leng­ing enter­tain­ments is per­haps just part of our own DNA, or of dark sado­masochis­tic urges that dri­ve us all, even against our will. That said, this bril­liant, bleak work is def­i­nite­ly not for everyone.

Demonlover is out now on Blu-ray by Arrow Films in a brand new 2K restora­tion of the 121-minute director’s cut, approved by Olivi­er Assayas.