Customer Reviews

Demonlover (Unrated Director's Cut)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Admittedly, DEMONLOVER makes a sharp left narrative turn at the halfway point that's going to confound viewers who are intrigued by the straightforward (and extremely absorbing) high-stakes opening. But that's no reason to dismiss the many, many things that writer/director Olivier Assayas gets absolutely right. In the end, DEMONLOVER is a fascinating mirror-world reflection (as William Gibson would call it) of where our global society might be just five minutes from now: the fittest who survive will be multilingual, career-consumed and ridiculously chic, but also soulless, as if missing the gene that supplies a sense of loyalty and ethics. The movie is a cautionary, though entirely plausible, tale of humans debased by their own lust for ungoverned capitalism. Every line of dialogue is about the business merger at hand; in the rare instances where feelings are discussed, they're usually about how *work* affects those emotions. The big wink here is that the characters don't even discuss business honestly, because each has duplicitous motives.

Technically, DEMONLOVER is a feast. Denis Lenoir's widescreen photography constantly dazzles -- many of the tracking shots are sustained in close-up (creating paranoia), and the color spectrum appears as if filtered through corporate fluorescence. (The neon-drenched Tokyo sequence is particularly hypnotic.) Jump cuts keep the narrative one step ahead of the audience. Sonic Youth's atonal guitar score creates the same mutant environment that Howard Shore pulled off in CRASH. Most significantly, Connie Nielsen's face (and hair and wardrobe) mesmerizes more than any CGI I've ever seen. Considering the labyrinthine motives of her character, Nielsen's exquisite subtlety may be lost on first-time viewers; on second look, her emotionless gaze speaks volumes.

Audiences (and critics) have unanimously attacked the "problematic" second half as an example of directorial self-indulgence. While I agree that it's not as satisfying as the first half, I don't think it's a total crash-and-burn (pardon the spoiler pun). Clearly, the ending is open to thematic interpretation, but I think Assayas is just saying that if our species isn't more careful, we'll end up like one-dimensional characters in a video game of our own devising - sure, winner takes all, but the rest of us suffer enormously.

Narrative ambiguity aside, DEMONLOVER is the great Hitchcockian/Cronenbergian espionage fantasia I've been waiting for. It makes sense that it would come from Europe, since Hollywood forgot long ago how to make their assembly-line genre exercises intellectually stimulating. (Like the animé porn within the story, Hollywood movies today represent no more than a calculated corporate commodity.) More than any other film from the last 2½ years, DEMONLOVER seems a product of the post-9/11 world - a not-so-distant future where overwhelming paranoia goads us to preemptively eliminate any form of potential competition before it can do the same to us. And how in doing so, we devour our own tail.

I expect this movie's reputation will grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years.

Olivier Assayas creates a visually stunning film in a dark world where multinational corporations invest in anime porn with further interest to invest in 3-dimensional animated pornography. The investments in 3-D pornography attract large amounts of money as several clients seek investment opportunities. This also creates an atmosphere where corporate espionage becomes a tool to maneuver competitors as it could lead to a monopoly on the market of animated pornography. The only thing that drives the people in the business of animated pornography is the trail of money, which becomes a path of greed, violence, and murder.

The story begins on a plane flying from Japan to France where Diane de Monx (Connie Nielsen) poisons one of the executives in her company in order for a rivaling company to gain access to information in a briefcase. This leads Diane into a spiraling exploit as she is put in charge of the Japanese account that manages the business of animated pornography. When she enters the business transaction she is aware that she is being followed by an unknown source. Nonetheless, Diane takes charge of her position and advances through the world of pornography while balancing it carefully with the company and the laws of France. However, she displays no concern for people as she ruthlessly proceeds in order to further her self-interest.

In the environment of Diane's own self-interest there are other people that are also looking out for their own interests by counter-espionage. This leads Diane into a world of internet pornography and sadistic elements of interactive torture over the internet. These people are, however, much more ruthless than Diane as they have no limits to how far they are willing to go in regards to making money.

Demonlover becomes a quagmire of moral values as Connie Nielsen's character wanders a path where she loses herself to pride, greed, and desire. On this path Diane finds herself lost and in a desperate attempt tries to survive as her life soon becomes expandable. Assayas intends to display the corruption of the character and how this corruptive treatment affects the awareness of the character in an uncompromising situation. Initially the story flows smoothly as Diane's life does, but as Diane becomes entangled the story loses itself very much like the character loses itself in the complex environment of deceit and greed. This provides an interesting point of view which is similar to David Lynch's Lost Highway, but Assayas never creates the hallucinatory effect that Lynch does and the film does not regain its balance as it becomes apparent what has happened to Diane.

This highly sensual film uses the slick Emma Peel-in-a-skintight-jumpsuit-meets-the-Matrix veneer that most people associate with high stakes business acquisitions, fast cars and corporate espionage . . . and for the first half of the movie, that is exactly what is delivered---intrigue on a multi-national and multi-million dollar level showcased in exquisitely neoned Japan, overseas business class flights and minimalist board rooms. Diane, played to perfection by Connie Nielsen is the Emma Peel of a French investment house intent on acquiring a monopoly on Japanese animated pornography. Perfectly dressed and coiffed, she epitomizes the business woman who has it all: brains, savvy and a polished understated unfluctuating demeanor that make her hard to read and hard to penetrate. We watch her intriguingly non-react as she puts a woman colleague out of commission, discovers that someone else knows what she has done, make deals with an Internet pornography competitor on the metro and all around suppresses her intrinsic sense of womanhood as she stands by and watches----no smiles apologetically----a piece of Japanese anime explicit with enough sexist content to render anyone with the vaguest sense of feminism a bad case of the hives. The fimmaker's vision of people in general in a world consumed by a consumerism so out of control that it feeds off its own negative energy, is blurred; the defining line between men and women eroded by a viciously amoral competition.

Then comes the second half of the movie where so many things seem to happen for no real reason at all. Yes, we can see the varying factions surface as the desire to win control becomes more sharply delineated---but instead of making it all work somehow, where the message, although hidden, can be revealed by some careful consideration, the series of images seem to just run amok. At the end, Diane has reformatted herself a la Laura Croft to deliver the consumer with that which he desires. The message: I am unsure---perhaps intense interplay produces human anime with little sensibility other than winning the competition and delivering product. An unhumbled Diane glares out at the world from a computer screen---is she beaten---no---she has just metamorphed.

This film is not recommended to everyone. Those looking for a fluid plot will not be satisfied with its second half. However, if you enjoy the sense of the real world being shrunk even smaller in a global marketplace where nationality and language are no longer real issues and the Internet serves as a conduit for salving any desire, you may enjoy this director's vision.

Demonlover is a very modernist film which deserves to be alligned with the great dystopic novels of the previous century, "We", "the Iron Heel", and particularly "1984" with one proviso its primary impact as opposed to literary is videogenic.
It tells the story of a corportate executive, appropriatly female, who will go to any lengths to succeed according to her on self-defined, narcisstic standards at odds with her objective appearances and in stark contrast to others expectations. Brash and domineering she uses a free floating cynicism to treacherously sell her corporate secrets to others for monetary gain thinking self-assuredly that her private intrique and machinations are curiously invioable, just as many criminals do. This is the first half of the film, in the second part of which so many critics don't like, all this ballsy swagger is shown to be an act of utter self-deluding fantasy; she has underestimated her antagonist and she instead of manipulating the system for her own gain she devolves into a most contemptible slave to it. A powerful morality tale for the times.

You also have quite a few detracting problems.

I must say, I'm surprised that there are no reviews for this item and I'm writing the first one. But then again, this movie has by-and-large, flown under most people's radar, and perhaps for most that is for the best.

I should probably say I hovered between giving this movie 2 or 3 stars for a while before I settled on 3. 2 seems to say "This movie is not worth watching" while 3 better says what I feel - "Might be worth watching."

Demonlover is a corporate intrigue and espionage film that seems to take place in the not-so-distant future, and concerns an employee named Diane who (ostensibly) works for a corporation looking to buy out a hot 3D cyber-pornography company called TokyoAnime. Also interested in these dealings are the fiercely, deadly competitive corporations of Demonlover and Mangatronics. The movie gives the impression that nobody is really what they seem in this movie, from Diane's boss, to her assistant (played by Chloe Sevigny), but you know, none of this really comes as any big surprise. Diane is not an ethical character, so when she gets more than she bargained for in finding out about a covert and dangerously-interactive S&M site, and soon... well, I don't want to give too many plot details away, but Diane raises the stakes for her own reasons...

After this, the movie descends into a sort of surreal, confused madness, sort of like the turn David Lynch took with Mulholland Drive, but... er, not really.

So, what's the problem? Well, for me, this movie never really distinguishes itself as or decides what it wants to be. It tries to put on some airs like it has the chops to be a high-concept art film, but a lot of it has that shoddy, direct-to-video, Cinemax pseudosexual thriller feel to it. This DVD is the R-rated version, and if you're looking for some direct, serious titillation, you'd probably be best served to look elsewhere, as more is implied than anything else.

I consider the photography and the cinematography to be pretty bad - I understand what they were trying to do, but I don't like the final product. As I said in my topic title, some parts of this movie are slick, if they had gone more with the slick, stylized photography instead of the "What the hell am I looking at" school of photography, I think the results would have been superior. This is a movie with flashy people, multinational corporations and high-tech cities, about pornography and voyeurism. A movie like this demands superior shooting and photography, which, especially in the latter parts, it does not deliver.

Many people will claim that the plot has no inconsistencies, and it takes you on the same wild, find-your-own-meaning ride that other, superior films do, but it doesn't. It tries the whole "confuse-you-to-make-you-really-think" ruse, but it's handled so ham-handedly and with such amateurishness that for me it doesn't work.

But this film is an interesting one at least, there are interesting elements to it, but I'm not sure I can recommend it. It's not horrible, but I'm not certain I could call it good. It's a fair movie, could have been *leagues* better. But, like I said, it feels less like a high concept art film than it does one of those sleazy-without-too-much-sleaze direct to video throwaways.

I walked out of the theater I caught demonlover in a couple of years ago sure I had witnessed a garballed movie ruined by a windbag need to be abstrusely "difficult." I'm not sure that assessment is wrong, per se, but since watching the movie, it's never quite left my mind, and I found myself purchasing a copy to watch it again. On this viewing, I'm far more kind. Its first hour is a top rate corporate thriller full of cunning acting and mesmerizing developments. Then, midway through, Diane (Connie Nielsen, in her only great performance to date) wakes up in a hotel room and the movie jumps through one of those Lynchian rabbit holes we call "Lynchian" to pretend we understand them (as if being deliberately unclear could be a calling card). The hallucination the movie becomes in the second half is a sort of half-cocked nightmare critique of soulless business practices, of the way the immorality of a corporation's practices and products can take over the essence of who its practiotioners are. Or so I think. Olivier Assayas lets the wind out of his movie for about an hour straight even to get that far, and it leads to narrative frustration, but I can't say watching this movie a second time that that frustration is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it takes me a place that I don't even go with David Lynch movies - Lynch is much more an artist of the hallucinatory. demonlover is, at heart, a movie of fairly innocent ideals told for maximum complication in a manner whose riskiness becoems its initial biggest weakness. Given another shot, you may find that riskiness returning you for another round, as I did.

Movies which begin with an interesting premise and then proceed to allow that premise to disintegrate are usually in that predicament because of an incomplete vision by the filmmaker of just what it is that he really wants to say. At this point story goes out the window, and what story cannot provide cinematography and editing are asked to substitute. They are used to hide the fact that the story has either disappeared or there never was one in the first place. And that is the main problem with Demonlover.

The director shirks his responsibility here. In similarly mind-entrapping movies like Fight Club (my favorite of the genre, brilliantly conceived and executed) we are yanked and cranked, our senses are stretched, things are not what they seem, but it all makes a kind of weird sense in the end. It does not cheat its own pre-established logic.

In Demonlover there is no proper logic (and it takes itself way too seriously - often a bad sign). Fantasy can have - must have - some internal logic by which it operates. It may not be a logic we are used to, but it does contain a logic of some kind to which it must be true. With Demonlover there is no internal truth, no operating system, no soul: we are simply hung out to dry. For example, in this R-rated version at least (I cannot speak to the NC-17 version as I have not seen it. Evidently there are twelve more minutes in that version though I have no idea what those twelve minutes consist of) the sly promise of titillating sexual perversion is danced around for two hours and then, finally, shied away from entirely leaving even that vain promise unfulfilled. There are murders that do or do not take place. We are never shown what really happened. And my supposition must be, in this case, that the director is using the tired - but still apparently fashionable - dodge of saying, well, you, the audience, you decide what is real and what is not real. Because I can't. This is a huge and utimately dispiriting cop-out. It's not artistic license here but artistic failure, a failure of courage and conviction. For an artist - if, indeed, not for all of us - that is the worst kind there is.

Well, I just finished watching Demonlover the Director's Cut and read all the reviews here and I didn't see that anyone picked it apart the way I saw it so I'll have to do it myself. A lot people mentioned Lynch. I didn't see that. What I saw was, possibly, a guy who was reworking three of his favorite movies. First was Wages of Fear and the way he used the "three language trans world feel" and the forever throat cutting approach and second was Lost in Translation with that slick, aloof Metro disconnection style of cinematography. You've seen it now in everything from Taxi Driver to The Bourne Identity and a hundred others. Thirdly and most importantly, this is a reworking of Videodrome with a very little bit of eXitenZ thrown in. Instead of seeing from Max's viewpoint though, we're seeing it from Harlan's(I hope I got his name right), Max's assistant. I think it's a less interesting point of view, though. The porn and it's restrictions, the double dealings, things not being what they seem to be, the S&M and subsequent personal involvement in it and even the murder sequence could be compared to one: waking up in bed with the older woman associate and secondly to the assassination (?) of Max's partners. You could even say there's a little Tron there if you look hard enough right at the end. Mostly though, it's Videodrome and if there's any chance you haven't seen it and you happen to think this is a good movie, then you better watch Videodrome and see what great filmmaking is really about.

Now I love Eraserhead, Santa Sangre, Videodrome, The Hudsucker Proxy, Spider, Belle de Jour, Saragosa Manuscript, Fellini's Satyricon, Amores Perros, 21 Grams and any number of complicated, even convoluted movies so when I say I think this is a waste of time it's not because I couldn't follow it. Incidentally, those other movies I mention are all must see films, if you haven't already.

I'll very easily illustrate a simple reason why it's not so good. I've never seen Gina Gershon, no matter how crappy the role was, ever be anything but a joy to watch. I wasn't even sure it was her I was watching. I missed her name in the opening credits and she was so dull I didn't think it was her for a while. In fact I wasn't positive it was her till I read the other reviews. I glanced at the closing credits just long enough to get the name of the star with the bad (b..b) job. And what about the shot of Chloe lying naked on the bed playing video games. Was that just for the director? The description of the sex scene by Inframan is a hoot and is another clear example of poor direction in this trite meandering mess.

The reason I gave it two stars instead of one is it does have enough style to keep you watching and hoping. But it in doing so it becomes pretentious and that's pretty hard to be in these times.

I've owned this movie for several years and tend to start it but rarely finish it. The characters are nasty, making lots of money off the lowest of behaviors. It's fun to watch it and zone out on the dark imagery and moody music before going to bed, and by the halfway point I'm worn out and ready to sleep.

Note: Presented in French with English subtitles.

The 2002 release `Demonlover' directed by Olivier Assayas starts out as a immensely intriguing exploration into highly unethical, cut throat big business practices, both corporate and individual, as carried out in the high tech, Asian erotic world of Anime fantasy and cyberspace. I found the initial premise to be not only fascinating, but extremely relevant in today's overly indulgent, dangerously narcisstic environment. With such a unique storyline the possibilities seemed endless and I joyfully settled back for the ride.

Imagine how disappointed I became as I watched this wonderful storyline devolve into a "I saw what you did" revenge plot involving office politics, a missing body, kidnapping, drugs, and internet porn. To further complicate matters an excruciatingly slow tempo, terse dialogue and obscure direction make it increasingly hard for the audience to maintain focus to the end.

Despite the overall good production values and strong cast the mismanaged, convoluted script places this film in the category of "what could have been, but wasn't". If it hadn't been for the presence of the seductive Connie Nielsen I don't think I would've been able to continue to watch all the way through.