FINDING INSPIRATION IN NARCISSISM
Nicolas Winding Refn sees your contempt and he raises you provocation.
The Danish director knows many people — especially critics — had big problems with his previous romp in repulsion, the blooddrenched Ryan Gosling revenge drama Only God Forgives.
He’s inspired similar extreme reactions — and Cannes festival boos — for The Neon Demon, a stylish Los Angeles horror shocker in which he equates the superficial allure of modelling with the consumptive habits of flesh eaters.
Elle Fanning plays the ingénue model who sets tongues wagging, blood flowing and bile rising. Refn, 45, is likewise up for an outpouring, calling from Chicago during a promotional tour:
I saw The Neon Demon again last week and I must confess I enjoyed it more than I did at Cannes. Do you get that reaction often? That’s what I do. I make experiences.
The score by your frequent collaborator Cliff Martinez really stands out this time, perfectly accenting the film’s dream-state tone.
I think his scores work every time. But this is our third collaboration, after Drive and Only God Forgives, and as they always say, greatness comes in threes. The music was so part of the DNA of the film, even editorially, I would leave scenes unfinished knowing that the music would come in and complete them. This is by far our kind of most ambitious collaboration.
The Neon Demon is technically a horror film, although it has a few dark laughs in it. Did you intend it as a satire of modelling and its obsession with bodily image?
No. Satire, for me, usually means something that’s cruel, arrogant and from the spectator. I think of this more as a very funny movie with a lot of camp, because camp is great melodrama. Besides wanting to do a horror film, I also wanted to do a melodrama, because the world of beauty is so obsessive. The fashion world is so extreme that you cannot but sometimes laugh at it. You maybe need to in order to just accept its existence.
I’m intrigued by Elle Fanning’s character Jesse, a 16-year-old aspiring model who seems both innocent and not innocent at all.
I felt that this movie was a great thematic combination for me. I was able to go from the very hyper-male fetish of Drive to the kind of emasculation of Only God Forgives and now floating back into the womb of the mother, to be reborn as a 16-year-old girl. So it made perfect sense. People have asked me, “Why now? Why women, why now? Why this character, why this . . . ?” And I tell them, that’s kind of how it flows: between my self and the canvas that I work on.
You’ve described The Neon Demon as being about “the future.” What do you mean by this?
Part of the movie is a celebration of narcissism as a quality, as a virtue. I think Elle’s generation is the same age as my children, so the acceptance of narcissism is very different from mine, which unfortunately had very much to do with sin — or unacceptance or somebody negative. Creativity is very narcissistic, just like it’s self-indulgent.
The more there is an element of that, the more interesting your creativity becomes. I believe that in terms of the future, and the acceptance of the human psychic evolution, that the artificial reality of the digital world as essentially a dead photo of beauty will eventually end up being reality.