The Neon Demon

I liked the one that helped set Harrison Ford’s character free in The Fugitive. And the one in Super 8 was exciting if a bit over the top. But I am not a fan of the train wreck that is the latest film from Nicolas Winding Refn.

The Danish director did great work with difficult subject matter i n 2008’ s Bronson ( Tom Hardy plays a dangerous thug) and went one better with 2011’s Drive, showing us sides of Ryan Gosling and ( especially) Al- bert Brooks we’d never seen before.

But he stumbled badly with its followup, 2013’s Only God Forgives, also with Gosling. He’s even pulled his star into his creative floundering; Gosling’s directing debut, 2014’s Lost River, played like a badly duplicated print of Only God Forgives.

Gosling is nowhere to be seen in The Neon Demon, which premiered at Cannes this year to love-it- or- hateit critical response. Instead we get 18- year- old Elle Fanning as Jesse, a startlingly natural beauty — her neck would make a swan choke — who has just moved to L. A. with dreams of becoming a model. Her first friend in the emotionally chilly, meteorologically sultry city is Ruby ( Jena Malone), a makeup artist who works part- time in a morgue; dead people have never looked more, um, tempting.

Jesse also meets fellow models Sarah ( Abbey Lee) and Gigi ( Bella Heathcote), casually cruel, catty catwalkers who coolly appraise the newcomer and decide to do their worst to her. But Jesse learns quickly, or else she was learned to begin with and just hid it well.

Then again, when industry lessons include lying about your age and understanding that “beauty isn’t everything; it’ s the only thing,” it doesn’t take long to become an expert. Refn seems to be saying that fashion is a world that will chew women up and spit them out, but his interpretation is far too literal to be thought provoking.

There are moments of weird, unexpected fun in the film. Keanu Reeves shows up as a skeevy motel manager with an opening line of “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” ( As in “slow down,” not “wow,” though the second meaning would apply when Jesse finds a puma in her room.)

But for the most part it feels like the director is just trying to shock and alarm the audience — the taboo-breaking and gore increase as the film goes on, until the final scene becomes a mutilated mix of inevitable and meaningless. Gosling has made a bad Refn- esque movie and now Refn has, too. Time to try something new.