PicoBlog

3/10

Considering how long I’d been meaning to watch it, The Neon Demon was a big disappointment. It’s a good example of how a movie can have individual elements to create something special—dazzling cinematography, some decent performances, a cool electronic score by Cliff Martinez—yet fail on the most basic level of telling a coherent story or having characters who act like human beings.

The film is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, who also created the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Mary Laws and Polly Stenham. Refn is perhaps best known for the Ryan Gosling film Drive, which garnered notoriety for its ad campaign that appeared to promise an exciting action movie, while the film itself was extremely slow with little action to speak of. I haven’t seen Drive, but after sitting through The Neon Demon, I now have a better idea of what to expect from the Gosling film. The pacing of most scenes in The Neon Demon is painfully slow, with every move from the actors deliberately drawn out to the point where it feels stilted and artificial. Initially this seems artsy and engaging, until we realize that every scene plays out the same way, making long stretches of the film a chore to sit through.

Set in the ruthless world of fashion modelling, Neon Demon follows Jesse (Elle Fanning), a 16-year-old from Georgia who moves to Los Angeles, following the unexplained deaths of her parents, to become a model. The pretty blonde Jesse quickly gains attention through her youth and natural beauty, sparking jealousy from older models. “Older” here is a relative term: characters at one point discuss how models are more or less considered withered old hags by age 20 or 21.

The Neon Demon is described as a psychological horror film. For some reason I was anticipating some big twist regarding Jesse’s true nature, but there isn’t one. Story developments in this film’s climax seem to come out of nowhere. When we finally get a burst of action, it feels out of place compared to what come before. Characters who were thinly sketched to begin with behave in ways that do not feel plausible.

Many scenes lead to nothing, such as a mountain lion invading the motel room where Jesse is staying. Others are overly abstract. There’s a key scene where, closing out the show of fashion designer Robert Sarno (Alessandro Nivola), Jesse sees visions of neon triangles and herself kissing her reflection. Evidently this represents her growing narcissism, but what’s with the triangles? Apologists for the film, which received sharply polarized reviews, suggested that The Neon Demon is meant more as an “experience” than a traditional narrative. I call that a copout. Movies can be ambiguous and impressionistic while still being coherent—see 2001: A Space Odyssey. In contrast, Neon Demon falters because the “experience” is muddled and unsatisfying.

The performances are good, though it’s not a great sign when Keanu Reeves is the standout, in an atypical turn as a predatory hotel clerk. Christina Hendricks is largely wasted as a modelling agency owner, appearing in only one scene. Jena Malone, as a makeup artist who befriends Jesse, should be praised for making her character’s turn convincing. Fanning, however, is arguably miscast as Jesse. There’s nothing wrong with her acting. But based on what we see here, it’s hard to understand why the characters are so enraptured by Jesse—who has a pretty “girl-next-door” look, but not to the extent that she would be the centre of attention the instant she walks into a room, as characters continually describe her. Jesse is distinguished by the other models around her chiefly by her more “natural” beauty, I suppose, which is the point—contrasted to other models like Gigi (Bella Heathcote), who despite being only a few years older than Jesse has had extensive plastic surgery.

Even so, there are times when the other characters’ worship of her veers into Mary Sue territory. I’m reminded of the way the character of Lana Lang was treated on Smallville: worshipped by everyone else for no reason other than good looks (representative dialogue: “Face it, Lana, you’re amazing.”) A bigger problem here is the fact that Jesse is largely a flat, passive character even after a dramatic personality change partway through, which occurs too quickly to be credible.

By the middle stretch I was wondering, “Where is this going?” The turn the film takes in its third act feels jarring and out of place with what came before. There are instances of necrophilia and cannibalism, physically impossible emissions from a woman’s body, characters acting in unbelievable ways as the movie suddenly turns into a slasher film, a gratuitous shower scene, and an absurd finale. The total absence of emotion in how Sarah (Abbey Lee), another rival model, reacts to Gigi’s fate is implausible, even if you argue that Refn is trying to show how the modelling industry dehumanizes people. I simply didn’t buy the actions of Sarah and Gigi.

The best part of The Neon Demon is probably the scene in which Sarno shares his thoughts on beauty. “Beauty isn’t everything,” Sarno says. “It’s the only thing … True beauty is the highest currency we have. Without it, [Jesse] would be nothing.” When photographer Dean (Karl Glusman), who is clearly attracted to Jesse, suggests that it’s what’s inside that counts, Sarno counters that if Jesse wasn’t beautiful, “you wouldn’t have even stopped to look.” Unfortunately, the rest of the film isn’t as interesting and is more about style than substance, with a fair amount of flashy but pointless scenes. Like the models it depicts, The Neon Demon is beautiful to look at, but in terms of substance it’s an unconvincing, incoherent mess.

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