The Neon Demon proves an inert gas

By Katherine Monk

They’re emaciated with bleached white teeth, wax-paper skin and hair that looks spun from plastic, but supermodels currently set the bar as far as popular esthetics go, pushing the almost-perfect to steep in shallow bitterness and the average to seek surgical intervention.

Our obsession with cosmetic appearances is entirely sick, but Nicolas Winding Refn clearly sees it for the viral contagion it is, which explains the motivation behind his latest film, The Neon Demon.

Purposely phrased like a modern fairy tale, this surreal and minimalist study of the supermodel lifestyle opens with a gory shot of a beautiful young girl posing on a couch, her throat slashed open and her eyes gazing emptily into the darkness.

As the camera pulls back to reveal a photo studio, a photographer and a makeup artist, Refn shows us his unholy trinity – then sets us up for the inevitable crucifixion.

It’s all metaphor: A dark and disconcertingly funny musing on Western culture’s worship of all things pretty, white, homogenized and flavorless. Refn treats this world the way a creative chef uses processed white sugar, reducing it, dying it, and spinning it into twisted and colourful hard candy.

Every single frame in this film feels like it came out of a gumball dispenser, and by the end, so does the entire film as we watch our young heroine Jesse (Elle Fanning) slide into a vat of molten sweetness, and emerge with a candy-coloured carapace.

To keep things interesting, Refn borrows conventions from vampire movies such as blood imagery, titillating seductions and an aversion to food as recurring motifs, forcing us to acknowledge the inherent dangers sooner than later.

You suspect what’s going to happen long before it does, but that’s another one of Refn’s choices. He wants us to acknowledge how much of this story we already recognize before it even happens.

We’ve seen the story of the young ingénue who lands in Los Angeles looking for fame and fortune before. American culture is predicated on legends of young starlets finding success and becoming the next Marilyn Monroe.

Refn wants us to feel that seductive, dreamy tug when he introduces us to Jesse, a nice kid from a small town who wanders into a hostile jungle of bloodsuckers. She’s sweet and we want her to succeed, but we recognize she’s easy prey.

Fairy tales offer support in the form of sprites and nymphs, but Refn’s mentoring godmother character is a makeup artist named Ruby played by Jena Malone. From the moment we meet Ruby, we’re wary of her friendliness, her desire to get close to Jesse, and her connection to the biggest runway shows in the city.

Ruby is a friend to all the supermodels. She knows all the high-fashion photographers, and she’s got a decidedly Sapphic romantic side that makes Jesse feel a little uncomfortable.

Taken at face value, Refn’s film looks like a dated piece of homophobia featuring a demonic lesbian pouncing upon a fresh young thing. But it’s so much wittier than all that, and far more creative too, because Refn is only concerned with capturing the thin veneer of cosmetics.

It’s why the movie feels so thin and vacuous, and the characters remain persistently dull: You can’t make a movie about the skin and make it deep. You have to skate on the surface with just enough edge to draw blood, which is exactly what Refn does as he throws Jesse into the infinity pool of fame – then forces us as viewers into a conflicted state.

Do we want her to succeed – even if it means selling her soul? The answer is Yes, whether we realize it or not, because it’s the American Dream. It’s what movies are all about. It’s the same reason why Keanu Reeves pops up as a motel manager: We want him to be the hero and save the day, but there’s no chance Refn is going to play by the rules.

He wants to blow up our entire hierarchy of assigned values, where beauty is prized above soul and empty formula is embraced before any creative challenge.

As a feminist viewer, it may be hard to sit back and watch every negative stereotype affirmed, but it only makes the experience richer because you have to fight off your own rush to judgment.

Women are a long way from transcending physical appearance as the central metric. Beautiful, busty women are still valued more than the flat and ordinary. This movie sinks its teeth into that jugular of truth without shame or disclaimers, allowing Refn to blow a very bloody raspberry at the beauty myth.

@katherinemonk

THE EX-PRESS, June 24, 2016