*Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn has turned the world of fashion into a carnivorous horror that explores the vicious side of the beauty industry. “The Neon Demon” finds leading lady, 18-year-old Elle Fanning, playing her up youth and innocence as she navigates through the industry and a jealous coven of fashionistas who prey upon her beauty.
The film arrived in theaters June 24, and during the Los Angeles press conference, Refn explained the origin of the film, which explores themes of witchcraft, blood sacrifice and Necrophilia.
“The origin came a few years ago, when I woke up one morning and kind of realized I wasn’t born beautiful, but my wife was,” the director said. So I thought, ‘I wonder what it would be like to having been born beautiful?’. It’s part of that fantasy that I think every man has, which is being desired for one specific reason, which is beauty.”
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the most dangerous of them all? See #TheNeonDemon?: https://t.co/fWvg2oq8aI pic.twitter.com/BxgGVQ1vdG
— The Neon Demon (@tnd_film) June 25, 2016
“Of course it’s very superficial but it’s also very complexing because beauty says a lot about us as people. Beauty is a subject that everyone has an opinion about,” Nicolas explained. “But I wanted to do it as a horror film because I was thinking this needs to be made for young people, and I didn’t want to educate or make a political statement or criticize the future. Part of the film was a celebration of narcissism as a quality. The idea of loving oneself. I wanted ‘The Neon Demon’ to be a movie about the inner 16-year-old girl of me,” Refn added.
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The film is vivid and aesthetically rich, and each scene is worthy of being framed and mounted on the wall, but it may take several viewings on late night cable for this writer to truly appreciate the structure of the narrative and most especially the pedestrian dialogue. There’s also moments of curious silence that the director and the film’s co-star Christina Hendricks (“Mad Men”) say serves as a plot device.
“I love silence because silence is the loudest sound in the room. The first time you really pay attention to a sound is when you don’t hear anything, and then sound becomes much more subjective, and becomes much more fantasy oriented because you begin to make up your own sounds,” Refn said. “At first it’s very uncomfortable because we’re not used to silence, we’re used to noise. We’re used to talking, but not talking is more scarier than talking, just like silence is more scary than any sound. Especially now-a-days when entertainment is so much about pulse and feeding things into some kind of constant attention span. But if you actually reverse that and go the opposite direction, it becomes much more interesting.”
Christina Hendricks added: “I found that with the silence or with the beautiful image that Nic let us sit in for a little bit, you found yourself having to confront your relationship with what was going on. Your relationship with beauty. Your relationship with this beautiful girl that’s supposed to be so innocent but then at then end you see this scene where she just gives this little smirk of enjoying being adored in this narcissistic, dangerous side of her,” she explained.
“And in those quiet moments, and moments where it was just music, I found myself being like, “This is so beautiful. This is so sexual.” This is taking fashion to such an extreme that you realize how absurd it really can be, and I’m glad I got to sit in those moments and really have to feel it,” Hendricks added.
Fanning described her character as “the most evil” of all the women who are vying to be her character Jesse in the film.
“Jesse is like the toxic poison that corrupts everyone else. I like this film because it’s a classic like “A Star Is Born,” Elle said. “Ya know — comes to a big city but she has a plan the whole time, and there’s this mystery underneath her and she uses her youth and her innocence as a mask to disguise it. For me, that was the most challenging part of it and also the scariest part of not knowing what’s next. In the script she’s a little different, so we made her a little darker than she was in the script. It was nice to show that side.”
Fanning is the younger sister of actress Dakota Fanning and mainly known for her starring roles in “Phoebe in Wonderland,” “Somewhere,” “We Bought a Zoo,” and as Princess Aurora in 2014’s “Maleficent.” Her breakout role came in 2011 as Alice Dainard in J. J. Abrams’ sci-fi-drama, “Super 8.” She has received numerous award nominations, including a special Spotlight Award at the Hollywood Film Festival — and her rising star is no threat to her older sister, who Elle says she is not in competition with.
“My sister started before I did, and kind of paved the way in the sense that the little sister wants to do what the big sister does. For ‘The Neon Demon,’ she didn’t read the script. We’re very separate with our scripts.”
“I think the stereotype within workplaces of women battling is a stereotype I was fed as a child but I’ve never actually seen it reenacted, expect for high school. That’s kind of where it lived and died for me,” co-star Jenna Malone said, when asked whether she, or any of the ladies on the panel, have experienced competitive and vindictive women in the workplace.
“I’ve seen much more power plays between men and women. I think that women coming together in a group creating something (is) something special because it’s so rare that you get to be in a kind of coven of women creating together. I think that energy alone is healing,” Malone said. “I find that any film that I’ve been on that’s had a majority of women on it, has been a very special, healing, creative, supportive environment. So I feel it’s a stereotype that doesn’t exist and needs to be put to bed because without the reality of actual reinforcement, it’s just fantasy. There’s no reason to teach our young girls that these things exist when they don’t.”
Jenna also explained that the exploitation of youth and beauty is not something that only happens to young girls in Hollywood.
“It’s not just about Los Angeles. I would ask every woman and man in this room if you’ve ever felt exploited or undersold by your own beauty, or devalued because of your facial structure. I don’t think it’s just about Los Angeles or the fashion industry or Hollywood. I think this is something that all of society can be affected by.”
“The Neon Deom” is the third consecutive film directed by Refn to compete for the Palme d’Or, following “Drive” and “Only God Forgives.” It was shot on a $7 million budget and production was delayed briefly after the crew found themselves involved with a real-life murder that occurred on location in Hollywood.
As Nicolas recalled, “I had gone to Musso and Frank cause we were shooting there, and when we arrived in the morning to look at the location, I came into the parking lot…someone had been stabbed and there was a guy holding a wound and screaming for help. So I got out the car, there was no one else there cause the people before me had gone in prior, so he was all alone.”
The director continued: “I hurried over to this poor man who was lying on the ground and blood was just gushing out, and I had my powerblanket on and I took it off cause you needed something to hold the wound down, but unfortunately the ambulance arrived too late and he died. So then it becomes a murder scene and we weren’t allowed to leave and I was like, ‘Oh my god, how are we going to do this?’. Because the insurance company certainly wasn’t going to care about if I was stuck in a murder crime scene. And I was standing around with all the policeman walking around and reporting and everyone had to answer questions, and I suddenly got a really cool idea, and that idea changed the film. So even though it was such a horrifying situation, I never saw anyone die before, it gave me one of the best ideas for the movie.”
“The Neon Demon” is now playing nationwide.
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