Don’t listen to the boo-ers, this is festival at its very best
The Neon Demon
THE French don’t boo, they hou. Imagine a herd of sarcastic cows, and you’ll get the general idea. At the Cannes Film Festival, vocal dissatisfaction at the end of a film isn’t rare, but the reception for Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon at its first press screening was one for the history books.
A number of critics stood to yell abuse at the screen. “Tonterias!” (Garbage!) someone bellowed in Spanish. Then the dedication “For Liv” appeared over a shot of an arid desert. (Refn’s wife is the Danish actress Liv Corfixen.) “F--- you, Liv,” someone shouted back.
What on earth would a film have to do to provoke that kind of reaction? The answer, in The Neon Demon’s case, is explosive menstruation, lesbian necrophilia, cannibalism, vomiting, gagging on knives, as well as oblique plotting, glazed, affectless performances, and lots of other good stuff we come to Cannes for.
I was one of a phalanx of applauders who countered the jeering elsewhere. Divisive and depraved, it’s also one of the best things I’ve seen at Cannes in what is a strong year.
The film is set in the Los Angeles modelling business, and its theme is the industry’s hunger for naivety and youth. It stars Elle Fanning as Jesse, a pretty 16-year-old who blows into town with dreams of the catwalk. She has what make-up artist Ruby (Jena Malone) describes as the “deer in the headlights look”. In other words, she’s untainted flesh on the brink of destruction. Jesse’s rivals, played by Abbey Lee and Bella Heathcote, decide she must be stopped – or at least dealt with in a way that will allow them to absorb her youthful essence.
The Neon Demon isn’t all-surface, no-substance: its surface is its substance, and that’s the kind of provocation that can easily throw a festival audience off-guard. No wonder the crowd as a whole couldn’t decide whether to howl or cheer. When it arrives in the UK in just over a month, you might not be able to either. The Neon Demon is released in UK cinemas on Friday July 8