![]() The film’s male gaze will be hotly debated. Once Hollywood gets a look at this performance, it won’t be long before Lee plays a full-blown blockbuster baddie, and I can’t wait. In addition to giving good look, she knows her way around a bitchy bon mot, and whether she’s stomping down the runway or stalking Fanning with a knife, there’s a savage athleticism to her that made me think of Charlize Theron. The 28-year-old model-actress popped up in last year’s Mad Max: Fury Road (shot in her native Australia), but as the cruelest and hungriest of The Neon Demon’s mean-girl models, she makes a striking impression. The supporting-actor surprise is Abbey Lee. Refn shoots camera flashes like lightning strikes, turning a simple studio photo shoot into a suspenseful setpiece he also brings in ringers like Christina Hendricks and Keanu Reeves for cameos, letting the former’s comic crispness and the latter’s sleazy sangfroid add welcome color. You’re in on the joke this time, not the butt of it, and there are all sorts of aesthetic and comedic pleasures to be had here. I’m happy to say, then, that The Neon Demon feels much more like Drive than its follow-up: While it’s highly stylized and far more bat-shit crazy than Drive, at least it seeks to entertain rather than repel. Like Jesse herself, Fanning is one to watch.Īfter Drive came out, Refn flirted with a number of big-studio assignments - including a quickly vacated gig directing Denzel Washington in The Equalizer - before turning his back on Hollywood with the ugly Only God Forgives, the film equivalent of two raised middle fingers. Casting her as a muse carries with it a whiff of meta promise, too, since Fanning’s work with Refn is the first of several collaborations to come with acclaimed auteurs, including films with Sofia Coppola, John Cameron Mitchell, Ben Affleck, and Mike Mills all teed up in the next year. She’s a sympathetic presence in the movie’s first half as Jesse endures a series of gross indignities - most especially the command by a top photographer to strip and assent to being groped by his gold-painted hand - and later, as Jesse comes into her own and exults in the power of her own beauty, Fanning finds something fascinating in Jesse’s hardened malevolence. (That’s hardly the weirdest thing happens in The Neon Demon, but y’know, it’s up there.)īest known for starring in Super 8 and Maleficent (and for her big sister, Dakota), The Neon Demon will be Fanning’s breakout moment as a nearly adult ingenue. Before the movie is over, plenty of blood will be spilled, splattered, and vomited, and Fanning will have catwalked her way through several surreal dream sequences, including one where she deep-throats a knife. But while Jesse expected to be wanted, she’s in danger of being devoured, and as a coterie of besotted artists, deposed supermodels, and assorted sleazebags lick their lips and circle her, Refn begins to put the horror in haute couture. “Beauty isn’t everything - it’s the only thing,” one fashion designer tells her, and it’s clear that Jesse’s guileless, dewy face is this season’s must-have. Only 17 when The Neon Demon was shot, Fanning commands the screen as Jesse, a fledgling model who moves to Los Angeles and finds herself beguiled by the fashion world and beset by rivals. Here are six things about this weird, wild film that will have everyone buzzing. With The Neon Demon, at least Refn has delivered a movie unlike any other being released this summer. ![]() This is a purposefully provocative, polarizing movie from a director who delights in dividing audiences: Refn won the Cannes prize for Best Director with Drive, though his critically acclaimed film later stumped mainstream moviegoers, and he followed it up with the gory, off-putting Only God Forgives, which left even longtime fans cringing. It’s a matter of personal taste, what you’ll make of The Neon Demon when it opens in theaters next month, but whether you’re booing your head off or staying until the bitter end to applaud, one thing is certain: You’ll definitely be talking about it. Worse, when the dedication to Refn’s wife, Liv, came onscreen, they booed her, too. As the film from Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn began to wrap, its Sia-penned end-credits song was drowned out by boos and whistles, and some critics were so enraged that they leapt to their feet to holler at the film. Over the back half of the Cannes Film Festival, not a day has gone by without a major movie earning its fair share of boos, but the scattered jeers aimed at movies like Personal Shopper and Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only the End of the World were nothing compared to the wild reception The Neon Demon got just hours ago in its debut.
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