This is a late-night film I watched on Saturday night (the 22nd). The time was 10:55 at night. The place was CGV Cheongju Zelkova City, and as it happened I had the theater all to 'myself.' It's because the film is quite a non-mainstream film, and the director named Nicolas Winding Refn isn't a well-known director in Korea either. The fact that it's a film rated for adults only played a part too. When you say you're watching a film on a Saturday evening, people usually think of a 'family film,' not a film close to thriller or horror like this. On top of that, since there were many scenes that might not suit Korean sensibilities well, I had that theater of over 150 seats to myself. Talking to myself, legs propped up on the seat in front, I don't think I've ever watched a film as comfortably as this time. But the film's content was far from 'comfort.' Really far.
I'll briefly explain the film's story structure and then talk about food for thought one by one. For me, director Nicolas Winding Refn is a first. I'd heard of a film called 'Drive' before thanks to Carey Mulligan, but since I hadn't watched it, I knew nothing at all about what kind of character this director's films mainly have. Even so, I think it threw out some food for thought in its own way.
The order of this piece is as follows.
Story structure - 'Beauty' - 'Color tone' - 'Music' - The message the director throws out - is the order.
For reference, this piece has many photos that are somewhat intense in color and unforgettable. I hope those with a weak stomach give up early and turn back. The film was quite brutal.
1. Story Structure; Characteristics as a Horror or Thriller Film
In the story structure itself, it's hard to find characteristics of a horror film or thriller film. To summarize, it goes like this.
1) Sixteen-year-old Jesse comes over to LA and, to make her model debut, has photos taken through a photographer named 'Dean' whom she met online. And those photos are shown to a modeling agency. She meets the makeup artist 'Ruby' whom she met on the day of the photoshoot with Dean, and goes to a party with Ruby. At the party she meets the newly-met but LA-based models 'Gigi' and 'Sarah.' 'Gigi' is someone who has had a lot of plastic surgery, and Sarah is less obvious, but the relationship with these two isn't very good at the first meeting.
2) After being shown to the modeling agency, she goes to a famous photographer named 'Jack' and asks for a test shoot. The test shoot is filmed with 'gold body paint' applied while fully nude. Of course, with just Jack and Jesse remaining. Until this is over Ruby waits, and meeting Jesse as she comes out from finishing the shoot, Ruby gives her contact info. Saying she'll become an older sister who can be a 'friend.'
3) On the evening of the day she met the agency, she goes up a hill near the city with Dean to look at the moon and the city. Jesse tells her real age, and confesses that she was proposed a false act there. And she rejoices that, though she has no talent whatsoever, she's been able to earn money with being 'pretty.' Dean responds to this by saying 'you have a lot of talent.' Afterward the two leave a promise to meet again.
4) After the test shoot, Jesse does a walking demonstration and gets selected by that designer. Sarah, who was in the same place, fails the audition and throws her own model file at the bathroom window glass, breaking it. Jesse enters that bathroom and tries to pick up the things inside the file, but accidentally injures her hand. After injuring her hand, she hurriedly returns home and pours alcohol to disinfect, but in the midst of being out of it from the pain, Dean comes with flowers and Jesse collapses to the floor from shock. After that Jesse wakes, Dean helps disinfect her hand, and she comes to her senses.
5) While waiting to take the runway, Gigi discovers Jesse and they exchange a conversation that's hardly a conversation. After this runway ends, 'Jesse' is transformed. To this 'transformed Jesse,' Dean asks 'do you want to become like them?' but Jesse instead answers 'they want to become like me.' After returning home like that, hearing the sound of the motel manager Hank assaulting some woman in the next room, she asks Ruby for help and goes to stay at Ruby's house.
6) Seeing Jesse who came out after showering, Ruby attempts a relationship, but Jesse kicks this away, draws a picture figuring Jesse on the mirror with lipstick, and then Jesse is killed by Ruby, Sarah, and Gigi. The three women, who covered their whole bodies in the blood that came from killing Jesse, go about their own lives the next day. Ruby buries Jesse somewhere in the garden, and Gigi and Sarah went to Jack for Gigi's shoot, but Gigi, reminded of killing Jesse because of the shoot location 'pool,' retches, and saying she wants to pull all of Jesse's things out of her own body, slices open her abdomen with a knife and commits suicide. Sarah swallows back down Jesse's eye that Gigi vomited up, and the film comes to an end.
That's the framework, and the 'fear' or 'thrill' that emerges within it can basically be felt through the angles, color tones, and the psychology that seeps out from the protagonist's actions. For example, in the film's first scene — that is, the shoot scene for protagonist 'Jesse's' portfolio (right below) and the scene of removing the makeup that follows (right below that).
From the intro itself, the director used color tones with very strong contrast and music that creates an eerie feeling. Because of that, I thought that 'Elle Fanning,' who plays the protagonist, was dead from the start. Fortunately, relieved that it was a photoshoot, I kept watching. Besides this scene, scenes that could look like 'horror' — like the scene covered in blood, the scene of bleeding, or hearing the moaning of someone in pain through the wall — all sorts of things became heart-clenching scenes. I thought 'wow, a director's directing ability can be this amazing,' and I felt that the emotion of 'fear' isn't an emotion you can only feel when a lot of 'blood' is necessarily spilled. If there are memorable scary scenes, there are scenes like these. Of course, reading the descriptions could be a spoiler, so you might need to be somewhat.. careful.
1) The scene where the motel owner Hank slowly inserts a knife into the mouth of the sleeping Jesse - the point that it was actually Jesse's dream
2) The scene where Ruby, having failed her attempt at sex with Jesse, draws the shape of a human face on the mirror using lipstick with an angry expression
3) The scene where, as soon as Jesse wakes from her dream, someone tries to break into Jesse's room, and when she locks the door, she hears a woman's scream from the next room
4) Sarah trying to suck the blood from Jesse's bleeding hand
5) The scene where Gigi, while waiting for Jack's shoot in front of the 'pool,' is reminded of having slashed Jesse to pieces and goes to the dressing room to vomit up Jesse's eye
6) The scene where, after vomiting up the eye, she commits suicide saying she wants to get rid of Jesse's 'things' inside her body
7) Sarah, swallowing back down the eye Gigi vomited up.......
8) The scene where the 'mortician' Ruby has sex with a corpse
9) The figure of Jesse standing on the diving board of a pool with no water in it, wearing a sky-blue dress
10) The scene where Jesse, in the show where she becomes the 'neon demon,' looks in a mirror and kisses the mirror
2. Food for Thought
This film, well, received a lot of harsh criticism. After this director's previous film 'Drive,' people's expectations of this director had risen, but it's because when you dissect the films that actually come out, they're criticized for having too little substance — that is, the 'story' is too flimsy — and it's true this film's story is somewhat lacking too. There's barely any dialogue and the angles are a bit unusual. Rather than capturing the protagonist directly on screen, it also captures the protagonist's figure reflected in a 'mirror.' But that doesn't mean there's no food for thought. This film clearly tried to discuss 'beauty.' A film that says beauty is the only value that should be pursued is just like the definition of 'beauty' remaining in the records of Hesiod. Like the saying, 'The beautiful one is the lovely one, and the one who is not beautiful is not lovely.'
1) The 'Beauty' that runs through the entire film
Ruby, Gigi and Sarah, the modeling agency, Hank (the motel owner), and Jack, who all first saw Jesse, don't seem to easily trust Jesse. The only one who shows 'purity' toward Jesse, who's just arrived in LA, is 'Dean.' The rest say the things in the first box below. Why do they say such things, you ask? It's because Jesse possesses a beauty others don't have. That beauty is exactly 'external beauty,' an 'aura.' It's unadorned beauty. Not something obtained through plastic surgery, just plain 'innate beauty.' I'm reminded of what the modeling agency said to Jesse. "You are very fit." In other words, the agency, Jack, and Ruby all discover potential in Jesse. Potential as a model. And that originates exactly from beauty.
(Sarah to Jesse at their first meeting) When people see a pretty woman, everyone imagines exactly 'what kind of man' she's having sex with.
(Ruby, picking out 'lipstick' for Jesse who came out after doing her business) Which is better, a lipstick named after a fruit or after sex?
(The modeling agency to Jesse ahead of the contract) People believe what people say surprisingly easily.
(When Jesse asked the manager for help because a wild tiger had gotten into her room) Are you high right now?
(Sarah or Gigi to Jesse) Don't pretend to be innocent; this seems to appear too many times. After asking this, Jesse always asked 'What do you mean.'
(The designer in front of Gigi, Jesse, and Dean) Beauty is the only thing.
(The designer to Dean) If Jesse weren't beautiful, would you (Dean) really have struck up conversation with Jesse?
Every one of these is words that appear as the 'purity' Jesse first had is lost as the story develops, while on the other hand the success she achieves as a model forms an inverse proportion. If there's one word from a different perspective, it would again be the words 'Dean' said on the day he went to see the moon together with Jesse. And this is almost the only one. It's because 'Dean' is the only antagonist character.
(Dean to Jesse, looking at the moon in the sky) Do what you think is right
I'm not sure exactly what Jesse thought was right. Because Jesse clearly didn't seem to have a very negative stance about succeeding with the beauty she possesses. That's why, when 'Dean' asked Jesse whether 'she wanted to become like them,' Jesse had the nerve to answer 'they want to become like me.' But the cruelty embedded within that purity of Jesse's, and others' jealousy of the beauty Jesse possesses, brought about Jesse's death. From the very moment her relationship with Ruby — who was both a mortician and a makeup artist — went sour.
This film deals only with 'beauty' from beginning to end. The beauty spoken of here corresponds to a rather clichéd 'external beauty,' but 'Dean' appears as the only protagonist who speaks of inner beauty. Besides that, the rest are all people who pay attention to beauty that's revealed on the outside. When 'Ruby' said of Jesse to Gigi and Sarah that 'She has that thing,' I briefly wondered whether she was talking about something like an 'aura,' but this ultimately isn't talked about directly, and it's also ambiguous to conclude that it might have been something like a homosexuality or instinct Ruby feels toward Jesse because Ruby is a lesbian. Of course, Ruby didn't look promising from the start (from when she casually told Gigi and Sarah the story about having no parents), and the point that this leads to murder in the latter part of the film was something that could be somewhat anticipated. Regarding this 'beauty,' all the protagonists except 'Hank' and 'Dean' were showing an 'obsession.'
1)) Obsession with beauty
'Gigi' is a Bionic Woman — in other words, she shows an obsession with beauty through plastic surgery. But this obsession with beauty has an obsession with 'outward appearance' yet no substance. Meanwhile 'Sarah' too shows an obsession with beauty. Seeing that she can't stand in the show but Jesse can, she throws her own model portfolio at the mirror, and sucks Jesse's blood. It's shocking... As the people around me said, it's not some scene of sucking a witch's blood in the medieval era — yet a scene of sucking blood appears in a modern feature film, and at that, as a scene of coveting beauty while sucking the blood of a beautiful woman. It's horrific, but it's also something that could plausibly happen. In fact, when I heard a story from an acquaintance of mine, there was apparently a noblewoman in Europe who bathed in the blood of such 'pretty women.'
The reason they show an obsession with beauty would be 'because they want to become beautiful.' In this respect they show aspects close to monsters (Demon). Of course, the standard of such 'beauty' seems within the film to be decided by a single designer, but if you interpret this feministically it corresponds to 'male power,' and if you simply approach it socio-structurally, you could call it the 'media' or 'designers.' In any case, it's not the models who decide beauty. Among models, those who fit the designer's demand are considered 'beautiful.' The models try to follow along with that. 'Gigi' is the representative example. But in the end Gigi dies, and there remains the monster 'Sarah.'
2)) Perspectives on beauty
Excluding Dean, everyone pursues beauty. External beauty. But that thing called beauty appears as something that 'can't be obtained.' To a model trying to get plastic surgery, the designer absolutely doesn't recommend plastic surgery. Jesse never laid a hand on her face once, but Gigi, even though she had surgery in many places — her face, her chest, even her eyebrows — doesn't obtain beauty like Jesse's. The designer adds a word here. He adds the remark that, while 'beauty' is the only value that should be pursued, beauty is something that can't be obtained unless you're born with it. Dean, who was watching this, raises an objection and storms out of his seat, but Jesse doesn't. I suppose Jesse too is saying that the 'revealed beauty' she alone possesses is quite valuable. Of course, there's no super-solid plausibility to this. But Jesse really does say with her own mouth 'I had nothing I could do, I had no talent,' and says 'I've been able to earn money with my beauty.' To this Dean says 'I can see potential in you.' Here thoughts sharply diverge.
1) The good looks revealed on the outside are meaningful.
2) The aspects not yet revealed within are meaningful.
It can be divided into these two branches, but honestly I'm not sure what meaning number 2 would even have for Jesse. Jesse's parents had already passed away, and it's not even possible to know exactly how Jesse came to LA. But she needed a way to feed and support herself in her own way, and it happened to match well with her own strength. Can any right or wrong even intervene here? I thought not. Rather, 'Dean' has his own car and camera. He also seemed to have a certain amount of money, enough to be able to take photos. Dean isn't a 'silver spoon,' but you can tell he was certainly in a better situation than Jesse. Just looking at a person's upbringing, in families that recognized 'inner beauty' within the household, they try to see the inner beauty of others. I sympathize with 'Dean's' perspective. He's the only antagonist character, but he had the cleanest eyes. The other people had too many things hidden behind their eyes.
2. Color Tone
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Honestly, I'm in a situation this year where I particularly wear and like pastel colors — that is, low-'saturation' colors — but this film is very, very far from pastel tones. Overall all the colors are very high-'saturation' colors and close to colors forming contrasts. Hmm, all the colors give a sparkling, shining feeling, to the extent that it feels like the kind of color combination we'd usually think of with 'neon signs,' the contrast of red and blue stands out greatly, and even when pink appears, it's used as a color forming contrast with purple. Based on intense colors, it used a lot of 'glowing' materials. Even the dressing room feels like a club-atmosphere dark tone with bright halogen lighting illuminating people.. This is the most impressive scene, the runway opening scene.
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I'll omit the explanation. I want to add more photos, but the more I add, the more I'd have to explain scenes with spoilers, so I think it's better to go watch it.
3. Music
From the film's intro to the end, there was only music that suits the image of 'neon,' and I think this music really played a part in forming the atmosphere. Electronic music, and at that, various pieces of music using synths, came through, and watching this alone in the theater while listening to it really made my heart clench. It was scary, there were too many scenes hard to predict, and to see neon in the middle of the night you'd normally have to go to a club, but this darn film uses neon that gives off a horror atmosphere. It keeps showing a neon triangle in the middle of a black screen, or shows the protagonist 'Jesse' with a neon sign shining on her — anyway, every single one was a weird angle, a weird scene, and weird music all bursting out at once, so my mind couldn't be at ease.
An impressive soundtrack - Waving Goodbye (the ending song)
4. The Message the Director Throws Out
When I first came out from watching the film, I limited the object 'Neon Demon' points to as just Jesse. It's because Jesse appears completely transformed exactly after the fashion show where the 'neon sign triangle' is seen. I thought 'this is where she becomes the demon.' But after a while, thinking about it, Ruby, Gigi, and Sarah were 'demons' too. They too corresponded to people mad about beauty — no, monsters. But in fact this is only the director's intent that I surmised. There's no way to know whether it's really so. The director clearly didn't separately explain the scene of slashing Jesse to pieces (he didn't even show it. He only blurrily showed, from Jesse's perspective, the figures of Sarah, Gigi, and Ruby walking toward the bleeding, lying Jesse with knives). He shows Ruby covered in blood, and Gigi and Sarah showering while drinking blood, and the next morning the scene of watering flowers and then sprinkling water on the spot at the pool bottom where Jesse fell. And then there's the scene where Ruby, using her 'mortician' career, buries Jesse in the flowerbed and spends time smoking a cigarette, and that figure appears along with Ruby's 'half-naked' body, and that nakedness is again full of tattoos.. I felt those tattoos really were monstrous too..
It seems the definition of monster became somewhat varied for me. I felt that obsessing madly over something can also be a monster - Gigi, Sarah -, and I felt that Jesse, who becomes a 'monster' by utilizing her own strength to the extreme, is monstrous too. As for in what way 'Ruby' was a monster, hmm.. you could say her outside and inside were too different — why on earth did she tell the story about Jesse's parents, and why on earth did she misunderstand Jesse's intent and try to assault her..... But even so, it seems the director ultimately shows 'beauty' as the highest value, and this is so upsetting and saddening. If I must state my own stance, I'm a fence-sitter — external beauty is important too, but without the inner beauty 'Dean' speaks of, would I really be drawn to that person... If someone is utterly off-putting in a way that contradicts their looks, I really dislike that, you see. It seems unbeautiful. So I think both are important.
Hmm.. the more I think about it after watching the whole film, beauty is an extremely important value, but because of it I'm only left thinking I wouldn't want to go that far (killing people, eating a beautiful person's eyes, drinking blood to 'become beautiful,' or acts of endless modification like plastic surgery). It's hard for me to infer exactly what the director intended, but I make a few personal guesses. 1) Beauty is the most meaningful value, worth dying for / 2) External beauty is absolutely not everything. / 3) Beauty is something no one can control.
Isn't there a story like this — in Greek mythology, when Menelaus, Helen's first husband, recovered Helen and tried to kill her, he couldn't kill her because her appearance was too beautiful. An absurd story, but one that's in the records.
One-line summary: The ruin and the dark side hidden within the beautiful word 'beauty' and gorgeous color tones.
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