"I was struck by the complete lack of morality."-Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
"Expect DEMONLOVER to become a midnight-movie staple in the coming years. And expect shards of it to roil your dreams for weeks."
-Ty Burr, BOSTON GLOBE
-Manohla Dargis, LOS ANGELES TIMES
With DEMONLOVER, Olivier Assayas turned his filmmaking 180-degrees following his stately costume drama SENTIMENTAL DESTINIES (2000). The film explores the back-door dealings of a large French communication conglomerate intent on purchasing the rights to a Japanese animation company specializing in Internet pornography. Technology, torture porn, and transnationalism dominated the landscape of DEMONLOVER, a film that gleefully eschews coherence. So many double crosses it is hard to keep up and several half-ideas drifting around, DEMONLOVER forms a fascinating commentary on our modern times and our increasing emphasis on the body as commodity.
Suggest Supplemental Screening: BOARDING GATE (Assayas, 2007) [The film feels like a companion piece to DEMONLOVER, they seem to be operating in the same cinematic world]
The film also stars Asia Argento, daughter of Dario Argento (the Italian horror master), who is often associated with the New Extreme as an actress (BOARDING GATE, THE LAST MISTRESS) and as a director (SCARLET DIVA, THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS)
Demonlover...it started out with a lot of promise. It had a fairly generic plot with likeable characters and seemed pretty linear. They threw in some anime porn and big cities around the world it was looking good. Then the narrative just turned on itself and the double agents working for her then her then him just spiraled into a confusion of fear and betrayal. Then the movie threw in some torture porn. Overall I just didn't appreciate this movie in respect to the rest we've screened so far. It wasn't explicit with violence or pornography really, and the characters as well as the storyline misled the audience. I understand that the chaos of the narrative coincides somewhat with the deception of the characters within the plot of sabotage and undercover work but for instance, why did Diane sleep with him after storming out only to kill him in the morning when he tried for the next morning lay, which as I commented with our group is only common courtesy. Then this fantastic escape crash with some mercy shootings leads us back to some suburban adolescent paying to watch her be tortured. it is a cruel sentiment of how the body is objectified and how twisted society can be, or oblivious/naive if you look at in the sense that he believed it was fake. However, I think if they had put more emphasis on the porn, switching to 3-D a more realistic, human like look, or even more on the torture, it would've been one more shocking, and 2. brought their conclusion more impact commenting on how disgusting we can actually be.
ReplyDeleteDemonlover was certainly a very interesting film. I definitely thought it was good, I just think I will need to see it again to really get it all. I had the misfortune of watching it in two parts because I started late at night and had to go to sleep. I stopped with about 45 minutes left. So I basically saw the plotted part, and then began again with the part where the narrative flies away.
ReplyDeleteActually I shouldn't say that it flies away, because I think that the ending is a sufficient ending in a way. I think that it is just fractured time and that some of what we are seeing happened before the events of the movie, and that some of what we are seeing happens when it happens, and some still further in the future. So I think that she may have been taken to the Hellfire Club before the events of the movie started possibly. Or it could be that what we saw was her being taken and such things and that the car crash was something that she may have somehow gotten away from and rescued by Sevigny. The whole ending is very confusing, but thats why I think its so interesting. Also, I agree with the notion in class that it was beautifully shot. I think it is an amazing thing to just look at.
Also, I must say that the movie jumps up on my awesome scale for throwing in an Emma Peel reference. That is cool since during middle school my dad got for us as a family the complete Emma Peel era of The Avengers, and it is a really awesome show. Well written, tongue in cheek, cheesy at times, and has two awesome performances by Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee. So yea, any reference to that is completely cool in my book, I wish the show was still popular (and that the movie they made with Thurman and Feinnes had been much better/true to the original series/reignited interest in the show). They at some point should take another crack at it, because they were such awesome characters, they just need to do it in the style of the classic episodes. Oh, and The Hellfire club is the name of a club in one of the Episodes called A Touch of Brimstone which features Peel in a dominatrix outfit, and the club is like an underground orgy club. Its hard to explain, but from what I remember that was one of the more sensual episodes they have done.
Mercredi passé a la libraire, tandis qu'il parlait avec une bonne ami, Josh vin et avons vu Demolover. At first we were intrigued, excited and curious... pero después nos aburrimos muchísimo y empezamos a hablar boberías mientras la película pasaba. Unagi to ken to no sekkusushīn'anime, oyobi chokusen-sei no ketsujo kara hanarete, je pense qui ce film a un grand potentiel.
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, that's how the movie made me feel. I was very disconnected and confused. Josh and I were trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and at one point, we actually decided to fast forward thinking we wouldn't understand anyway... but of course, as we started FF-ing, Diane and her boss started kissing so we had to go back and re-watch it. I think that was quite interesting within the parameter of this movie. It's not something that I would like at first sight theme-wise, and because of that non-linearity it became even harder for me to follow. But when finally we decided that the movie wasn't worth it, it surprises us and we take it all back, to finish watching what's gonna happen.
I keep going back to Funny Games (which I thought was brilliant by the way) in the way that both these movies try to alienate their audiences so much that they what they end up doing is actually pulling them further into the story.
This was definitely a movie to remember.
ps. everything in the first paragraph makes sense. I promise, translate it.
So, I am not really sure where to begin with Demonlover. The first 2/3 of the film was actually really interesting and I was desperately trying to put the pieces together in my head. Little did I know that my efforts were in vain. I get it, Diane did things she shouldn’t have and got punished for it. A common plot, but not in this case.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, the constant jumbling of languages did not help, especially when I was constantly shifting gears to figure out what was going on.
I was hoping it would evolve into a great thriller/mystery film. Powerful people fixing other powerful people’s mistakes all in the name of porn? It should be interesting.
I will say that I loved the cameo of Gina Gershon. But then again, who wouldn’t?
I feel like this entire post in jumbled because when I watched the film my head felt jumbled as well. I was left with more question in the end. The biggest question: Why didn’t they stop Diane after her first murder attempt. I feel like Assayas spent the entire movie making her as despicable as possible so that when she is finally punished the audience would be pleased. Maybe he was just trying to trick the audience into finding pleasure in something as horrific as human trafficking, torture, and rape?
I have to give Assayas credit for all of his popculture references. The Hellfire Club? The organization that turned Jean Grey into Phoenix. Well done sir! Theat, along with references to Emma Peel and the like at least kept me interested.
The film had some really gorgeous shots, especially during the car chase scene.
And all I can say about the ending is this: I wonder what that kid’s mother thinks when she reads the credit card statement.
Demonlover was a horny attempt to make the porn industry seem more adventurous than it most likely is. Although we are all aware of the lengths people will go to get paid, the exclusivity of obscure porn distribution relationships is not one that I particularly care about. Of course the cast was amazing, and at times I felt invested in the sexual exploits of their personal lives. However, I would not want to eat while watching this film, nor would I use it as a tool to turn on my girlfriend. Either the director's fetish appeals to disturbing behavior, or he wants the audience to reevaluate their financial contributions to human exploitation and sex trafficking. Shot beautifully, and the tone was consistently twisted and gloomy. Not horrible, but also not my favorite.
ReplyDeleteHated it. I thought Demonlover had an interesting premise, with an interesting I'd never seen before (or again probably), but the story went from boring to confusing to boringly confusing. A jump reserved for most episodes of Murder She Wrote. I was brought in on the initial hook of a woman trying to sabotage a deal between two major porn distributors. On the surface an interesting premise in an even more interesting setting, but past maybe the first 20 minutes the world of the weird anime porn studios is replaced by bored meetings (get it?), with conversations labored by language barriers and translations. The protagonist seemed fitting in the beginning, but once the more spy/espionage stuff got going, she seemed completely inept. The "action" was almost as slow as the board meetings, and built little to no suspense. I get that this film wasn't supposed to be a Bond film (Bondage...James Bondage) but there was so little to keep me interested in this film other than the confusing storyline. Speaking of confusing storyline, this movie didn't have a storyline. The narrative structure completely evaporates at one point, and goes into this torture porn site that I guess was supposed to be shocking, but compared to other torture porn movies (Hostel, Sweet Home Alabama) this seemed like a feeble attempt to shock or frighten the viewer. After witnessing the ineptitude of the protagonist, and her pension for killing guys mid-coitus I completely lost interest in her character, and didn't really care how many electrified beds the strapped her too. I get the whole message about ourselves as active viewers, stylized visuals and all that, but I felt like this movie missed on every attempt to get me interested in this bland "thriller".
ReplyDelete