Neon Demon

(Nicolas Winding Refn/2016/France, Denmark & USA)

Refn delves into the world of fashion modelling in this satirical and scathing tale of an adolescent girl, naive and overawed, trying to make her way in Hollywood’s cut throat arena of scantily clad women. It’s nothing new in terms of a story but stylistically he takes the pomp and sheen of that world and reflects it back from the cinema screen as a crass and shallow image of itself. It is visually luxurious and seeping in allegory. The established models have modified themselves and their habits so much to adapt to what is expected of them to work within the industry that they react with spite and aggression to the purity and apparent innocence of Elle Fanning’s Jesse. However, the jaded, cynical and downright malicious photographers and model selectors salivate over Jessie and soon she is a star. This provokes further reaction from the other models and from Jesse herself as she inescapably changes with the growing limelight and attention.

Neon Demon is an exquisitely crafted film but careens dangerously close to the very exploitation it is critiquing. There are extended sequences that meld together and have a dream like quality and the symbolism is at times cringingly obvious. And therein lies the problem with it, it looks beautiful, is put together well and is open to interpretation and thus provokes debate but it seems at times as shallow as the world its depicting, is obvious in narrative and doesn’t really say anything new. Refn has an outspoken love of old slasher flicks and it is difficult not to consider this as a big budget, glossy homage of sorts. But it does induce conversation around its subject and what exactly it is as a film itself and for that it’s worth a watch.

(3/5)