Her Private Hell

Ten years after presenting The Neon Demon in Cannes, Nicholas Winding Refn’s return to the big screen is as much a spiritual successor to the latter as it is a definitive departure from the constraints of narrative. Contrary to the impeccably precise storytelling of Drive – which is widely regarded as Refn’s magnum opus – Her Private Hell unfolds as a loosely connected sequence of stylised tableaux.

It presents an abstraction of show biz in its primary setting of a high-rise hotel, in which the actresses of comic adaptation Candy Floss are staying. Elle (Sophie Thatcher) is the star; her colleagues are her mother-in-law Dominique (Havana Rose Liu) and newbie Hunter (The Buccaneers’ Kristine Froseth). As they share anecdotes of a serial killer known as Leather Man, a second storyline about a Japanese soldier (Charles Melton) looking to avenge his daughter emerges.

Like in any of the director’s films, the meticulously composed visuals are a feast for the eye. Fluorescent lights in hues of pink, purple and blue dance on the actors’ faces, the movement carrying as much dramatic weight as the actors’ performances, if not more. The way the actresses are draped and positioned like mannequins, perpetually facing the camera, has an unsettling theatrical quality to it. There is an erotic charge to the cinematography when the interplay of light and shadow punctuates Charles Melton’s toned body as he stalks through the night and fights the Yakuza.

What ultimately transforms the deliberately artificial elements into a haze of dreamlike detachment is the music by legendary composer and frequent Brian De Palma collaborator, Pino Donaggio. The orchestral score veers towards the grandeur of an opera, giving the film an otherworldly and enchanting fairy-tale atmosphere.

The style-over-substance smorgasbord is far from the comeback fans would have hoped for from Winding Refn, but once liberated from the burden of expectation, the degree of interpretive freedom may be just what some audiences crave in an era increasingly shaped by narrative formulae. A magical fever-dream of a film, Her Private Hell allows viewers to find meaning rather than simply have it prescribed.

Selina Sondermann

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