Nicolas Winding Refn
The Neon Demon

Seeing Refn, it is difficult not to think even for a moment that he might conceal some undercurrent of mental discomfort and/or autism. This Dane, who I don't believe needs further introductions, was as a child (needless to say!) extremely troubled and, chronologically: dyslexic, colorblind, and unable to relate to the wonderful feminine world—mother excluded, obviously—he has become one of the most badass artists of contemporary times.

I deliberately avoided the term "director," since the path Refn has taken at this point in his cinematic career has very little to do with directing as it's commonly understood. After a dazzling start with the three Pusher films, the good Bleeder, Bronson & Valhalla Rising, and the pop-Hollywood arrival of Drive, followed by that market logic spit in the face that is Only God Forgives, our Dane has definitively decided to let aesthetics turn his cinema into Art. Above his nevertheless impeccable directing technique stands a devastating aesthetic approach, annihilating, capable of pushing back any critical sense, hesitation, or leftover from the usual spectator's reasoning to let our senses whirl in free fall into his idyll. To crown our descent into the Hell of his (complacent, why not?) perverse pleasure, a reversed cinephile Eden, the music of Martinez is obviously necessary, never more essential (in the sense of fucking NECESSARY) as in the case of this Neon Demon. A mixture of 80s synth, techno, minimal dream electro-pop that drags, rides, screeches, entices, overwhelms.

The dazzling scenes, masterfully constructed in their visual and sound dramatization, are abundant. The perfect union of lights, music, images accompanied and supported by stellar performances, among which, besides the virginal Fanning, a devastating Keanu Reeves stands out, making The Neon Demon an ideal compendium of the state of the art to which Refn and his camera have arrived. According to his own statements, in a world where entertainment will more rapidly become an exclusive priority of the Internet, cinema and its arts flourish and can only flourish in niches of personality where the expressive potential is released to the highest degree of its individuality and singularity. The approach of the director, of those who make cinema, must necessarily become unique, original, all-encompassing in its pursuit of the stylistic and stylizing ideal; not for this denying one's own influences and/or thefts... and indeed Neon Demon recalls many other films: the names of Argento and Schrader, of Lynch (a name already linked to Refn in the past) have been mentioned, yet such considerations are worth very little. So too with any attempts at presenting a plot which, beyond not relying on a real script (ipse dixit), could disgust a certain type of viewer just like many other details and moments of a film during the entirety of which I nevertheless couldn't abstain from catharsis. And to those who do not perceive this catharsis, I am sorry but it is undeniable, they have deficits compared to possible and glorifying evolutions of this language.

It is no longer just about violence, it's no longer just the colors or the timing, the music, the meticulousness of the individual parts that trigger the catharsis of Neon Demon, but the combination of these elements and their overlap in a kaleidoscope of suggestions, symbolisms, discomforts that is not as difficult as many would have you believe: it is accessible, and it must spread, it will spread. First in your retinas and then in your thoughts, dreams, memories. A film about beauty? An indictment, a triumph of grotesque and sarcasm? Glamour-horror-art house exploitation? Artistic suicide? Masturbation? Overdose of neon? Dumb nonsense, delirious collage? Advertisement with a touch of mockery? ...

... Postmodern?...

Fottesega. The Neon Demon is a work of art. But not "video art" or things like that.

A work of art.