How Bleed­er was a land­mark for Nico­las Wind­ing Refn’s dis­tinc­tive style

A vast gulf in style sep­a­rates the book­end­ing films of Nico­las Wind­ing Refn’s oeu­vre. His debut, Push­er, traf­fics in a sense of live-wire imme­di­a­cy, achieved through grit­ty hand­held cam­er­a­work and a dread-induc­ing, plans-gone-awry nar­ra­tive. Too Old to Die Young – the tele­vi­sion series he com­plet­ed before his new Net­flix show Copen­hagen Cow­boy – is rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent. Push­ing Refn’s by-now-trade­mark affin­i­ty for neon and vel­vety elec­tron­i­ca to exper­i­men­tal extremes, the ten-episode minis­eries decel­er­ates the pace to the point of attain­ing a molasses-like con­sis­ten­cy. Lan­guid zooms, pans, and track­ing shots abound, por­ing over tableau-vivant-style stag­ing involv­ing sta­t­ic bod­ies arranged like man­nequins in a fash­ion photoshoot.

These two styl­is­tic extremes, in being so dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed, imbue Refn’s fil­mog­ra­phy with a dia­log­ic ten­sion, each illu­mi­nat­ing the other’s char­ac­ter­is­tics by con­trast. And yet, this ten­sion doesn’t sim­ply exist inter­tex­tu­al­ly, between films. In 1999, they con­verged in Refn’s Bleed­er, which, despite being only his sopho­more pic­ture, feels like a tran­si­tion­al work in ret­ro­spect. A meet­ing point between the two styl­is­tic poles, the film is also ​“about” this very con­ver­gence, explor­ing the vio­lence and beau­ty that ensue when real­i­ty and fan­ta­sy, life and art collide.

Like Push­er, Bleed­er is set in work­ing-class Copen­hagen and often adopts a pseu­do-vérité approach to cap­tur­ing its char­ac­ters’ dai­ly activ­i­ties, which include bustling in a deli kitchen, loung­ing around the apart­ment, and talk­ing with cus­tomers at a video store. Con­sis­tent with this quo­tid­i­an ethos, moments of vio­lence are dis­turbing­ly believ­able when they erupt. When one of the pro­tag­o­nists Leo (Kim Bod­nia) hits his preg­nant girl­friend (Rikke Louise Ander­s­son), the act, while not jus­ti­fied, is framed as emerg­ing in some sense ​“organ­i­cal­ly” from the character’s tem­pera­ment as well as the dead-end socioe­co­nom­ic milieu that cur­tails his prospects for change and on top of which the bur­den of impend­ing father­hood feels like the final nail in the coffin.

Despite dis­play­ing cer­tain real­ist ten­den­cies, Bleed­er also abounds with flash­es of baroque styl­iza­tion. At points, the film’s reliance on mun­dane diegetic sounds – e.g., the tin­ny audio of a ​’70s kung-fu film, play­ing in the back­ground of the video store – yields to aggres­sive, melo­dra­mat­ic nee­dle drops, like a por­ten­tous choral refrain that imbues a night­time dri­ve with an apoc­a­lyp­tic air. Red – a deep, angry red – is a recur­ring col­or motif, infus­ing var­i­ous moments with a phan­tas­magoric charge. It’s the col­or of Leo’s wall­pa­per, sug­gest­ing the latent vio­lence with­in his home, and scene tran­si­tions repeat­ed­ly involve the image slow­ly fad­ing to red as a deep, omi­nous rum­bling is heard on the soundtrack.

These vivid styl­is­tic punc­tu­a­tions don’t mere­ly sup­ple­ment the main dra­ma, but, rather, seem to exist in dia­logue with it, evok­ing the ways in which the realm of art, arti­fice, and fan­ta­sy medi­ate char­ac­ters’ encoun­ters with the world, col­or­ing their con­cep­tion of real­i­ty. Red light­ing appears in a scene at a club in which Leo wit­ness­es a shoot­ing, an inci­dent that inau­gu­rates a pow­er trip in which he becomes obsessed with buy­ing a gun; sim­i­lar, san­guineous light­ing sat­u­rates the moment when he first shows off his new revolver to a friend.

At one point, he angri­ly bran­dish­es his weapon while stand­ing in the pro­jec­tor light of a screen­ing of William Lustig’s Mani­ac, a film about a ser­i­al killer who dress­es up man­nequins in his vic­tims’ attire to enact a fan­ta­sy of con­trol. The alle­gor­i­cal con­nec­tion to Leo’s own sit­u­a­tion is clear enough (his asser­tions of pow­er are plain­ly tied to feel­ings of impo­tence), but, giv­en that the screen­ing is part of a reg­u­lar get-togeth­er between film buff friends, the scene also sug­gests that Leo’s macho pos­tur­ing may very well have been mod­eled after the films he’s watched.

In Leo’s char­ac­ter arc, Bleeder’s meta-cin­e­mat­ic focus on cinephil­ia acquires a cau­tion­ary dimen­sion, high­light­ing the dan­ger­ous (and ulti­mate­ly fatal) con­se­quences of some­one attempt­ing to turn his life movie-like. But the film also con­tains a more whole­some, hope­ful depic­tion of the art-life rela­tion­ship. Lenny (Mads Mikkelsen), the oth­er pro­tag­o­nist and a video-store employ­ee, spends the film try­ing to muster up the courage to ask out Lea (Liv Cor­fix­en), a local deli work­er. The most movie-obsessed mem­ber of his friend group, Lenny talks about lit­tle else, even to her; films are his lens onto the world.

The thing is, his approach works: Bleed­er ends with plans made by the pair to see Armaged­don togeth­er (a play­ful title choice). Fur­ther­more, it’s through the tools of cin­e­mat­ic fan­ta­sy that Refn express­es the force of Lenny’s long­ing. In two of the film’s most euphor­ic moments, the image goes dark save for two spot­lights illu­mi­nat­ing Lenny and Lea, all while a pop melody plays on the sound­track. Antic­i­pat­ing the famous ele­va­tor kiss from Dri­ve, these moments sus­pend real­ism and seem­ing­ly time itself, enter­ing a tran­scen­dent space of roman­tic rever­ie. They rev­el in arti­fice but, for that very rea­son, feel potent­ly true.