The Neon Demon

I'm not going to hide anything I loved this movie. There is not a shot in this movie that isn't stylized in a way I enjoyed to the max. The neon colors, the use of snyth music within the silence,  the camera zooms, locations, and the beautiful women. Refn makes Los Angeles both the locations and the people look so glamorous. He also mixes the beauty and the beast and in ways I didn't expect. I thought the second half of this movie would be a downward spiral. Instead it is more like a character becoming unlikable as they become narcissistic. They get corrupted in the opposite from what you might expect. Everything in here is an allegory of some kind for Hollywood and the modeling industry and how people exploit but also how people are jealous and narcissistic. It shows what a nasty business the modeling industry is and how it changes everyone in some way. This is one of my favorite movies of the last 10 years. There may not be a color palette in a movie I like more. 

The movie starts with Jesse (Elle Fanning) doing some modeling pictures for a man named Dean (Karl Glusman). Ruby (Jena Malone), a makeup technician helps Jesse clean up. Jesse talks about how she came to California to be a model. She later says to Dean that she turned 16 recently. Ruby takes her to a party where she meets other models, Gigi (Bella Heathcote) and Sarah (Abbey Lee). Gigi and Sarah have more experience, but haven't gotten that far. Both Gigi and Sarah talk about surgeries they've had and they wonder who Jesse is seeing and Jesse has to feign having experience with men. The next day Jesse goes to meet Roberta Hoffman (Christina Hendricks) a modeling agent. She tells Jesse she needs a parental signature that she forges and that she is going to get her a shoot with notable photographer Jack McCarther (Desmond Harrington). 

A look at the credits. Awesome varied Neon Colors.

An example of the neon colors you can find in the movie.

An example of some of the lighter colors you can find in this movie. 

The shoot with McCarther goes well. At one point he clears out the set. Outside Ruby says she shouldn't be alone with him, though nothing bad happened. Ruby goes out to eat with Gigi and Sarah and tells them that Jesse has all ready been photographed by McCarther something that took them longer to get to. They envy her youth. Meanwhile back at her motel Jesse finds there is an intruder in her room and asks the sleazy manager Hank (Keanu Reeves) to go investigate. There is a mountain lion in her room and Hank blames her and says she will have to pay for a new door. Dean eventually gives Hank the money. In doing so Hank says are you getting anything out of this deal. He talks about a 13 year old girl in a room next to her that is being used for sex. This comes back later and actually is part of the whole allegory of this movie. 

Jesse goes to a casting shoot for fashion designer Robert Sarno (Alessandro Nivola) where Sarah is also present. He pays no attention to Sarah but gets mesmerized as soon as he sees Jesse. Sarah smashes a mirror in the bathroom and Jesse goes to investigate. Sarah asks Jesse what it is like to be noticed and to be the center of attention. She says it is everything. Jesse closes out Sarno's latest show. After the show is over Jesse meets with Dean and they sit near Sarno, Gigi, and another model. Sarno talks about how, "beauty isn't everything, it's the only thing." Dean retorts back by saying that it is what is inside that counts. Sarno says, "If she wasn't beautiful you wouldn't have stopped to look." Sarno then compares Gigi negatively to Jesse. He knows about how Gigi has had surgeries to make herself look different. About Jesse he says "Nothing fake, nothing false a diamond in a sea of glass." Dean wants to leave and Jesse tells him he can go, basically dismissing him. Dean waits to confront her back at the hotel and he asks her what she wants to be and if she wants to be like other models. She says I don't want to be them they want to be me. Jesse's transformation into narcissist is complete.

I can only run through scene by scene so much in this movie without explaining the style. Starting with the credits that are in different neon colors, reminding me quite a bit of Blood and Black Lace and how the opening to that movie is an appetizer for a filet mignon meal when it comes to the colors. The opening of this movie is done well. First of all Jesse looks dead with all that blood on her but the shot pulls back and you see the giant set which she is on and how it is surrounded with the neon red light. The bathroom scene has the same neon blue and purple lighting. The scene after that with the blinking strobe lights and the synth music is amazing as well. This movie works on a purely visual level and also auditory with the synth music.  Just the shots of the Los Angeles skyline and the palm trees at night are great too. No one has made LA look more beautiful and otherworldly. It also has substance. Some of the dialogue and the allegories are top notch. Those quotes between Sarno and Dean are some of the best. 

There is much hidden meaning to be found here. Jesse is just like any other girl who has dreams of going to Hollywood, or dreams of making it as a big time model. She is consumed by what other people say about her but not in a bad way. Instead of feeling bad for herself in the case of someone like Sarah she starts to feel a bit too good about herself. How many actors have we seen that happen to? She thinks she is better than everyone else. Everything the three girls go through I think could be relatable to anyone in the business.They either are one of them or know someone like them. Sarah and Gigi are two insanely beautiful women but because the modeling business is all about making someone feel bad so they are always trying to look better, they get bitter. They are jealous of Jesse's natural look and only do more unnatural things to themselves to try to look better. Women do things differently then men. Men's destructive behavior is more physical where for women it is emotional. What they can do to each other through jealousy and rumor is nasty. This is seen in the movie between the three women and how they react differently to Jesse's fame. When they go out to eat Sarah and Gigi can't order anything besides a fruit cup. I'm sure there are models who can't order anything to eat because they have to be watching their weight and figure to an insane degree. The movie, especially during the model walk scene has a prominent male gaze but that is true to life. The male gaze is what modeling is full of. Every scene feels like something real. Hank is a representation of a real person. Pedophilia is rumored and has certainly happened in the film business and the modeling business. There are women who have been taken advantage of by people when they are young in Hollywood. Hank represents that corrupting outside force. Even the housing situation in LA where she has to stay in a seedy motel feels real. How many people actually can pay for a place to live after just moving out there? 

The three triangles Jesse starts to see could be representative of ID, superego, and ego. She gets consumed by ego and she sees the versions of herself in love with the other which shows how in love with herself she is. At that point her transformation is complete. Even what she goes through with Jack feels real. Jack first asks her to take off her clothes. She takes off her shirt and pants but then he wants the rest taken off to which she does. She looks nervous but the shoot goes well. I was nervous that Jack might try to do something. Even still you get the feeling he is not just thinking about art there and it shows the exploitation side of things. Yes he is taking good pictures that will help Jesse but it seems like he is also taking advantage of her. I love the aesthetic in that scene. We go from nighttime with Jesse and Dean to the bright white of the backdrop and then the black of whatever background he uses. It felt like a real casting session in Hollywood or the first real shoot for a young model. 

Spoiler Section

Jesse has a nightmare about Hank coming into her room and sexually assaulting her with a knife. After she wakes up she hears the 13 year old getting assaulted in the room next to her. This was after the person came up to her room and she locked the deadbolt. Really suspenseful scene. Jesse calls Ruby and goes to stay with her and they share an intimate scene where Ruby starts brushing her hair and they call each other wonderful. Ruby takes the wrong signs and begins to assault Jesse after she repeatedly says no. Jesse admits she is still a virgin. Ruby goes to her job at the morgue and has sex with a corpse. I can't think of her in the same way now. While she does this we see her having thoughts that turn out to be real while Jesse is back at Ruby's place putting on a dress she left for her. Ruby gets home and finds Jesse on a diving board near an empty pool. Jesse says "I know what I look like? And what's wrong with that anyway? Women would kill to look like this. They carve and stuff, and inject themselves. They starve to death, hoping, praying that one day they'll look like a second rate version of me." Gigi and Sarah show up and attack Jesse. They chase her through the house and surround her near the pool where Ruby pushes her in. She breaks her leg and bleeds as the three women drink bathe in her blood and eat parts of her body. The next day Ruby cleans up and lies in Jesse's grave. She expels the blood from her as she urinates. Meanwhile, Sarah and Gigi go to a shoot for Jack. Gigi gets sick at the shoot and throws up one of Jesse's eyeballs. "I need to get her out of me,"she says as she stabs herself in the stomach. Sarah eats the eyeball and goes back to the shoot.

I'm not entirely sure how to interpret the end of this movie. Gigi, Ruby, and Sarah are clearly witches or vampires and they consume Jesse, both literally and metaphorically. It is cool that the men in this movie are shown to be sleazy but none in particular are shown to be predators. I think if this were about acting they may have gone that route, or if the movie had been stretched out longer. Instead it is the women who get the best of Jesse in the end. She starts to rub everyone the wrong way with her narcissism. Dean being left behind represents the changing entourage people get when they become more famous as they usually leave other people in the dust. The ending with the eye is like being chewed up and spit out both literally and figuratively. Some people can live with doing awful things to other people to get ahead, like Sarah. Others like Gigi can't. Since both Gigi and Sarah talk about getting surgeries and stuff I think they would assume that eating Jesse is the best way to get her youth. This is possibly something they have done before. It also eliminates Jesse from being an actual threat to their success as she is longer present. The stuff with Ruby I can't quite figure out. This could be an initiation of some kind and since Jesse rejected her advances maybe the alternative is eating her. They talk about food or sex in the bathroom scene at the beginning. Maybe with their supernatural abilities they can eat her to satisfy their hunger so they can keep their model looks and figure. I don't know there is a lot of possibilities for more interpretation.  

There is so much I love how about how the second act of this film looks. The blood and gore is great. I love the dark red blood on Jena Malone as she sits in the bathtub. The dark blue color scheme in that scene only enhances the look of the blood. I don' normally enjoy the dark red blood but I liked it there. The use of a big mansion for such an artful horror scene reminded me of something out of a Jean Rollin movie. We also get some nudity but it actually had a point. The blood makes it not as exploitative and Ruby stares at Sarah and Gigi as they shower so you are seeing it through her eyes. When Ruby is topless as she cleans the next day we see all her devilish tattoos which confirm the witchcraft angle present in the movie. Even the location of the photoshoot at the end I love. It just has that prestigious Los Angeles look that not many other movies get right. The FX when Gigi cuts herself at the end are great. There really isn't a shot in this movie I don't love. I'm curious to see how it will hold up on a second watch and if there is even more I will notice about the allegories. It reminds me of some giallo movies I love. Not only the emphasis on style but the inversion of the modeling agency as something corrupt. The mystery only helps that.

Rating: 10/10

Trivia: Elle Fanning said that her eyes were open so long in the opening that her contact lenses were burned into her eyes by the light. The film was shot in chronological order. Nicholas Winding Refn is actually color blind and can only see contrast and primary colors. Refn had Elle Fanning watch Beyond the Valley of the Dolls to prepare.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cipOTUO0CmU