“When I was a kid, I would sneak out onto the roof at night. I thought the moon looked like a big, round eye.” Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest film, The Neon Demon, is littered with mirrors, cameras, and eyes lingering where they shouldn’t be – obsessed with the act of seeing (which was also the title of Refn’s 2015 book of vintage film posters). It follows young model Jesse (the ridiculously beautiful Elle Fanning) as she tries to break the fashion scene in Los Angeles, meeting two brittle models, Sarah (Abbey Lee) and Gigi (Bella Heathcote), and a mysterious make-up artist, Ruby (a quietly menacing Jena Malone).
Throughout, Jesse is constantly positioned as an object, both to the characters within the film, and to the audience. In one scene, she faints, falling gently to the floor with a bouquet of roses in hand, looking more pure and perfect than any renaissance painting of Ophelia, and we devour it with as much fervour as any of the photographers staring hungrily at her on set. No wonder she imagines even the planets above her to be staring at her from the sky.
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