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| Connie Nielsen is threatened with a gun on this poster for Olivier Assayas' Demonlover |
Demonlover is the 9th film from great French writer-director Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)).
The potential purchase of a major Japanese porn company is taken over by the mysterious Diane after a nefarious take-down of her boss. The stakes are high and the moral basis is lacking in the executive environment we meet in Demonlover.
Demonlover presents a weird environment I haven't seen depicted elsewhere in movies, which is probably to a large degree thought up: An executive branch to the porn industry, which is a cynical sphere governed by some intense, dangerous business-people. - Not brutish gangsters but cold business-folk. Women are at the forefront of Demonlover, as in other Assayas films, and multi-languaged, sophisticated, impressive Connie Nielsen (Return to Sender (2004)), sexy Gina Gershon (Bound (1996)) and hot-blooded Chloë Sevigny (3 Needles (2005)) are fascinating to watch as the three main ladies, all so nuanced and fierce in each their own way as to make the film worthwhile watching.
Unfortunately, the strange environment isn't opened up too invitingly. For the majority of the film, I was far removed from Nielsen's antiheroine and unsure as to the intent behind this excursion to the backstabbing, top-layer of the porn world. The film has neat cinematography by Denis Lenoir (Still Alice (2014)), emphasizing a live, fast camera and obscureness such as rain and reflecting lights. The plot seems a bit contrived and never manages to steal the scene from the actresses and aesthetics at play. - Demonlover is more a film that seems to want us to ponder the new and ever-expanding universe of the world wide web and what its darker corners has to say about us and do to us, SPOILER offering the insight that it dehumanizes us and is dangerous.
The film also has a great music side made by Jim O'Rourke (Love Liza (2002)) and the great American alternative rock band Sonic Youth (Things Behind the Sun (2001)). Fans of electronica and rock removed from the mainstream will appreciate this element of the edgy Demonlover as well. Not at all a bad film, but one that also isn't quite good.
Here's a video on the making of the film's soundtrack
Cost: 7.2 mil. $
Box office: Reportedly 0.685 mil. $
= Box office disaster
[Demonlover premiered May 19 (Cannes) and runs 117 minutes (the unrated cut, the R-rated runs 115, while the initial Cannes cut ran 129 minutes.) Filming lasted from July - September 2001. The film opened in September 2003 #60 to a 39k $ first weekend in 8 theaters in North America, where it peaked in 15 theaters and grossed 232k $. It made 230k $ in its native France. It played in several other countries, many just at festivals, but still only racked together a very small gross, especially compared to its relatively high budget. Demonlover is rotten at 49 % with a 5.5 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Demonlover?
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