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)

Drowning by Numbers

(Peter Greenaway/1988/UK and Netherlands)

Presenting a story roughly hewn from the template of a fable or fairytale whereby the same thing happens three times with differing effect or meaning, Drowning by Numbers is part fantasy, part surreal structuralism and 100% Peter Greenaway. Three generations of women with the same name bump off their husbands/partners and inveigle the help of the local coroner in hiding the murders with promises of sexual favours in return. The promises aren’t kept and the inevitability of the closing scene becomes increasingly apparent.

But there is so much more going on above and below the surface in this film. A visual and vocal count from one to a hundred occurs throughout, referenced early on by a girl skipping in the street as she names off stars in the night sky, stating a hundred is enough. Every scene is laden with the bizarre and surreal, whether it is fruit, abundant and rotting or bugs and slugs permeating the decor. There is movement and noise everywhere as the story rumbles on in the foreground. It is a cinematic exuberance, a celebration of sorts, championing storytelling, myth and imagination. But there are deeper intimations also, the male characters are a weak and flawed, none of them can swim, water is a huge presence, a visual motif for the adeptness of women for living in the natural world. The men are ogres of sorts, base, lecherous and disposable.

This is a layered film, dense with meaning, red herrings, cues, clues and intellectual trickeries and absolutely prone to numerous viewings, once will not do it justice. Michael Nyman’s score is an absolute treat too.

(3.5/5) 

Permanent Objections

(Grzegorz Królikiewicz/1975/Poland)

Although the subtitles translate the title as Eternal Grievances this film is widely referred to as Permanent Objections but I have also seen it called Perpetual Claims or Constant Complaints. An ambiguous title then for what is a surreal, arthouse experiment using the lives of a pair of ordinary men in communist Poland as a metaphor for the impossibility of state led moral responsibility. How can Franek and Rysio be trusted to properly inspect meat factories and enforce compliance when they are beholden to their own base instincts, the one a lustful, misogynistic flirt, the other a deceitful gambler and both drink sodden carousers? They are human, subject to temptation and the film is a jab at the state that would try and force some sort of moral regime on people by people. 

For me it is saying we are responsible for ourselves and nanny state intervention encourages iniquity or maybe the metaphor is for the inherent corruption of the state as it attempts to enforce a moral code – impossible, as the enforcers are all too human and open to debasement. Either way it is a mesmerizing 90 minutes of skewed, jarring cinema utilizing a myriad of techniques to break conventions and question the viewer. Admittedly some of these come off as film student grade cinema but in the main it’s an engaging and though provoking flick.

(3/5)