By James Mottram
“Any kind of reaction is interesting,” Nicolas Winding Refn tells FilmInk at The Cannes Film Festival. “As long as there is a reaction.” If there’s one thing that Nicolas Winding Refn doesn’t have to worry about, it’s his films getting a reaction. From the Danish director’s homeland drug trilogy, Pusher, through to his international cult ascendancy on the back of Bronson, Drive, and the polarising Only God Forgives, Refn’s films have consistently provoked excitement, awe, disdain, disgust, and delirium…often at the same time. His latest effort, The Neon Demon, is no exception. An exercise in high cinematic style, the film draws on the Italian giallo tradition to tell the story of Jesse (Fanning), an up and coming model who falls into the orbit of Alessandro Nivola’s saturnine fashionista, in the process discovering that the glamour of the fashion industry conceals a world of bloodshed and horror.
Like Robert Altman (Pret-A-Porter) and Ben Stiller (Zoolander) before him, Refn finds ample thematic grist in the fashion industry mill to craft a film steeped in satire. “That’s why the world of fashion is so wonderful to manoeuvre in,” the director says. “In a way, it is so campy and so ridiculous, but also it’s so beautiful and so intoxicating and interesting to look at. It’s a very diverse world. But on the flipside, there’s also a cruelty in that world. It’s very evil and very disgusting, because you are just a piece of meat. But that is the same with everything. Casting a movie is the same way. There’s something very sadistic about having power, especially over women, from a male’s perspective.”
Weaving themes of vampirism and cannibalism (“It’s a standard metaphor of consuming,” says Refn. “It’s our biggest primal fear. You can see Cannibals on The Walking Dead every Sunday at 8:00pm, so there is nothing new in it”) through its dense thematic fabric, The Neon Demon hurls plentiful barbs at society’s continuing obsession with youth and beauty. “I laugh at it, but I also find it frightening,” says Refn. “From a female perspective, it must be very difficult, but I’m just a dumb man. But I have daughters, so that itself always makes me think, ‘I hope that they’re going to be okay.’ It’s more and more a dominating factor about being a girl. The obsession just continues to grow. It’s like evolution. All around us, technology allows us to create a fake universe that we continue to mirror ourselves in. It’s like [the myth of] Narcissus falling in love with his own image, and never being able to catch it. That’s why beauty is so complicated. It’s not a superficial subject. It can be. But it’s also, on another level, extremely complicated. It’s frightening and terrifying, yet it is melodramatic and camp and ridiculous. It was a great canvas to go from one spectrum to the other spectrum.”
The Neon Demon also links with Refn’s 2011 thriller, Drive, in that it plays out like a strange, surreal love letter to the director’s adopted home of Los Angeles, a city filled with violence and pain, but also a place of curious beauty. “The reason why we shot this in LA was because it was the only place that I wanted to live,” Refn says. “So it was like, ‘I’ve got to make that work.’ I love LA. I love it, I love it, love it! It is such an incredible place to work. There is such a mystical quality to it. There are unique LA archetypes that are, of course, very fun to play with when you are there. But LA is not the place that is obsessed with beauty. The whole world is obsessed, but it all beams back to Los Angeles, and then beams back out again.”
In a seemingly unusual move, The Neon Demon also sees Refn teaming up with the streaming service, Amazon Prime, who will distribute the film in the US. “The only thing that you have to do as an artist is to remain singular,” the director replies when asked about the deal. “Singular is your lifeline. It’s a way to survive, especially amidst the digital revolution, which is this huge canvas of everything. Because there are no other people to support you other than yourself, because everything is accessible. What I love about working with Amazon is that on one level, they are giving me a great theatrical release in the US – that is, in the classical way – while at the same time, they are completely modern about their streaming services as a worldwide phenomenon that anyone can click on. It was like a blessing that they came on board. They came in with the best offer that I have ever gotten in my life. I don’t fear the digital revolution. On the contrary, I welcome it with open arms. Because as I always say, I am from the future, and I make films for the future.”
The Neon Demon screens at The Melbourne International Film Festival, which runs from July 28-August 14. To buy tickets to The Neon Demon, click here.
