SinceDrive, most « consensus » The Danish filmmaker can boast of having shaped an aesthetic signature sufficiently sharp for his cinema to radically divide criticism. Incomprehensible genius for some or impostor flogged the weight of postmodernism for others, Nicolas Winding Refn never leaves indifferent. After the already dividedThe Neon Demon(2016) andOnly God Forgives(2013), many of his critics already believed that these latter productions had taken the tangent. WithHer Private Hell, relegated out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, has the director turned into a cartoon of himself?
When the opera turns into a farce
While a strange mist swallows up a futuristic metropolis and releases an elusive mortal presence, a troubled young woman leaves in search of her father. During this quest, his destiny meets that of an American GI engaged in a desperate journey to tear his daughter out of Hell, says the Cannois synopsis. The origins ofHer Private HellNicolas Winding Refn claims that the idea suddenly appeared to him after having nearly died as a result of heart failure. It is from this dramatic incident thatHer Private Hellwould have been born, he said, without anyone really knowing if it was a pompous marketing argument or the sincere approach of an artist returning from the gates of hell. Hard to evoke the script of the film as the writing is tainted with mediocrity. While the works of Nicolas Winding Refn have always been indisputable sensory experiences (although in motifs subject to debate), his latest film has been a bad farce to the badly shaken narrative.
In the line of the imaginary nightmare of his previous films much more mastered,Her Private Helltakes the triptych based on fatal women, a photograph bathed in neon-violet lights and sudden discharges of brute violence. Where his previous films were still rooted in a universe a little bit intelligible, a minimum in incipit,Her Private Hellopts for the uncomplexed pop opera map. The hic, the lead wire seems to have been cut at the secator from the first minutes of the film. It is as if this onanic fable multiplied the wanderings and sponcifs: speech of a distressing platitude and too wise libidinous delirium vomits on the screen succeed each other between two yawns, for the pure pleasure of a filmmaker who seems to look at himself and his wax dolls filmed from all angles.
With a stunning beauty inversely proportional to the emptiness of the characters, the female protagonists are so hollow that one is unable to know to whom to attach, the emotion being totally absent. A few choreographies remain but immediately ankylosed by an overwhelming OST signed by the Italian composer Pino Donaggio, yet famous for his collaborations with Brian De Palma or Dario Argento. Never did Refn succeed in generating this strange feeling that was recognized for example in the performances of flesh and metal of David Cronenberg's film,Crimes of the Future,far more transgressive thanHer Private Hell.If we don't misunderstand, this lubricated poetry of the poor will not surprise anyone, not even the lovers of eroticism. It is not enough to chain the romantic symbols of sex and death drowned in a mysterious mist to even touch the guro. InConannAmong others, filmmakers such as Bertrand Mandico had managed to grasp its essence with much more consistency than Refn.
Daddy's Florilège Issues
Fancy-mele, confusing scenes of banality follow one another. With no tail or head,Her PrivateHell gives the impression of a bad promotional clip for perfume. Pure product of postmodernism, aesthetics never serves anything but itself in a permanent self-masturbation exercise. So yes, Nicolas Winding Refn is still as good at multiplying the plans with the millimetre composition but for what purpose? This cheap acid opera multiplies the clichés. Lascive women look at the camera, their eyes empty (of course), each covered with a pot of makeup paint. These muses chain cigarettes and platitudes by declining the whole range of data from which we know.
One of the father's protégés (another Freudian cliché) wants to dethrone the mother-in-law of the same age and, therefore, you will have understood, to sleep with her. Suddenly,She, one of the daughters of an old dark paternal, vaguely presented as a psychopath fornicating with his progeny available, is rushed into a spaceship at Star Trek. The entry into the hyperspace of anything ends in a blaster battle, all while tutu clinging in an inter-sideral crystal forest drawn from a bad k-pop clip. Why, why not? Anyway...
Libidinous to the trowel
The stories cross without ever giving the impression of being connected by a millimetre of conductive wire. «Why art should only have one narrative? » Nicolas Winding Refn was defending himself at the Cannoese press conference. We end up bailing in front of this Louis Vuitton parade where a spoiled-looking filmmaker seems unfortunately locked up himself. This show of nothing shows us so many dismaying scenes and without an ounce of distance, ranging from women objects sex symbols subject to the sexual desires of their father to the mother-in-law of the same age who literally japps like a dog. Then comes from nowhere a soldier with a prominent jaw that beats thugs for no reason between two clops lit at the traditional zippo of any good bobby... icing on cake: what if we put a wet panties in the mother-in-law's mouth, who will then defend herself with a pie shovel against her attacker? Dubitative, the spectator wails and questions between two amused sighs not to say annoyed: do actresses really know what meaning to give to each of their futile replicas? Everything is done to give the impression of a film patchwork and bariolate with upset desires for fifty-year-old misos at libido in dark.
« I approached the film as an opera» claims the Danish filmmaker whose first made an outcry noticed on the cruise and rightly. «I'm the biotic man because before I died, I was given a present and I said I could do it again. How many people can have a second chance? ». In an impulse of megalomania as humble as suddenly, he adds without hesitation: «God gave me a second chance? How can I broaden my children's horizon for the future?? » He concluded, before melting in tears at the canine conference. Journalists applaud as if they didn't know how to react after this revelation of a beat artist who thought he was taking a demiurge destiny. We fought hardMegalopolislast year, we enjoyed the previous films by Nicolas Winding Refn, we are no less accustomed to tortured works. Yet we don't know what arguments to use to defendHer Private Hell. We left pantois, animated by the feeling of having witnessed a sad shipwreck, a gesture as vain as indigestible, that of a new masturbatory repetition in the mirror of the void. Dismaying.
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