After Drive, Refn seems obsessed with his idea of Los Angeles, one where there’s always a full moon, no traffic and everyone is speeding in sports cars with the tops down. The Neon Demon is no different, though now Refn’s focused his energy on
Jesse’s a quintessential innocent in a breezy goddess dress, while veteran models — and frenemies — Gigi (Bella Heathcote) and Sarah (Abbey Lee) wear an armor of form-fitting haute couture as they haze the new girl with talk about sex and “
Whether or not you connect with Refn’s brand of over-the-top violence, you can’t deny that his attention to color, texture and music is nearly unmatched by other directors working today. Meticulously composed, each scene reveals a deep richness of production design, the camera lingering in slow motion (albeit sometimes a bit too long) to allow details like the peeling, sickeningly floral wallpaper in
At a “show” where a naked body bound in a few leather straps levitates, suspended in black nothingness, strobe lights splash purple and pink on the beautiful bodies of these women, but in the surreal modeling world, that’s just par for the course. Refn’s inventive with his
And, just like
Heathcote and Lee, both models in real life, are riveting as caricatures of the worst, most narcissistic humans. While the pretty slow-mo pictures of Jesse in extravagant clothes and makeup are interesting for a while, it’s Heathcote and Lee who carry the film with deadpan hilarious (if sparse) dialogue. When Gigi chatters on about her plastic surgery, Jesse says she would never go under the knife because she “likes herself.”Gigi’s response: “I heard your parents are dead. That must be hard for you.” These carnivorous women circle their prey, and Refn emphasizes their threat with live and stuffed wildcats that pop up throughout the narrative. These women, this hungry destructive industry, are enough of a danger before the kill, but Refn makes a grave misstep, and here’s where I must speak about the intolerable in The Neon Demon.
Rape is not a fucking plot point. It’s just not. People attempt to rape Jesse twice within the span of 10 minutes, and while we don’t see a rape happen, we see one attempt and hear the excruciating screams of a 13-year-old girl getting raped in the room next to Jesse’s. Much of this film works because it’s a fantastical vision of a bleak world, but the moment with the