Demonlover | | Cast : | Connie Nielsen, Chloë Sevigny, Gina Gershon | | Director : | Olivier Assayas | | Studio : | Lions Gate Home Entertainment | | Format : | Color, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | January 01, 2002 | | DVD Released Date : | September 14, 2004 | | Language : | French (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | Unrated | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 13, 2005 | | Summary | Elusive but invasive | Content
 | 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. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 19, 2005 | | Summary | Has Good Atmosphere, But Needs Inner Logics & New Ideas | Content
| In spite of the interesting title, 'Demonlover' is not a horror film. Olivier Assayas presents his vision about the today's violence on the Internet, porn films (Japanese anime-style), and fierce competitions between companies. But the results are simply an awful mess, unconvincing and even laughable at times for anyone who knows better than this French director.
The film's central figure is unlra-icy Connie Nielsen as Diane, kind of business person nobody comes to like. No wonder, for hard-working Diane is actually a spy in the pay of another company, which is desperate to get a contract with 'Tokyo Anime.' And to get what she wants, Diane even poisons the bottle of mineral water her superior Karen is going to drink.
This seemingly orthodox thriller turns something different after a while. Diane, now in place of Karen, travels to Japan where she negotiates with the anime company that invented 3-D porno-anime. Since then, Diane is drawn to the underworld of the Internet site where a hoodwinked woman is seen tortured.
However, 'Demon Lover' refuses to concentrate on the topics that are intriguing, if not original. By the time you finish watching half of it, the film gets more and more confusing, losing the thread of the story, intentionally or not. Chloe Sevigny appears as Diane's ill-used secretary, who gives a few surprises to Diane. Fine. From America, Gina Gershon arrives for the business negotiation. Between her and Diane, something happens (surprise again), of which reasons or outcome, nothing is explained. Finally, something shocking happens to Diane herself, but by the time we see it, because of the murky story and impossible situations, we just stop caring, thinking 'So what'?
[WHAT'S THE POINT?] In one interview, Oliver Assayas said he didn't use the traditional storytelling techniques on purpose, having done that in two previous films. Whatever his reason may be, the results are only a series of confusion, and the lack of logics is just terrible. This two hour long film has little to say about the ever-changing world of business, animation, or Internet. And what little it has, it is nothing new.
Of course, some of you might find the film interesting for the same reasons. It is true that the film is often given power enough to unnerve us with strong visulas. The film really wants to show the relations between money, Internet, and violence very seriously, but stylish visuals are not good enough.
After all, however, the most damaging thing about the film is that what Assayas's film presents here looks, even at the time of its original release, old and incorrect. The 3-D manga-style porno film is not as new and innovative as the film thinks; the 'hellsclub site' idea (a very crutial part of the film) has already been seen in films like '8 mm'; and as to the 'cut-throat' nature of the business world, well, the anime industry is surely competitive, but not so fierce as to really cut someone else's throat. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 09, 2005 | | Summary | Considerably less than advertised | Content
| 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. |
| Rating | | | Date | December 29, 2004 | | Summary | Gripping though elusive hallucinatory trance - drugs helpful | Content
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I absolutely loved watching this movie for the first hour. I disagree with comments slamming the visual style - the slick, over saturated, nervously jumpy, and tremendously atmospheric filming work perfectly to pull us into Diane's growing obsession with (or dependence on?) the over stimulation of the high-tech porn aesthetic. Moody and atmospheric, this film is filled with eye candy ranging from gorgeously detached shots of Tokyo to loving studies of Diane (played by the lovely and here compellingly transformational Connie Nielsen) and even a light smattering (though very light for those of us watching with one hand in our jeans) of hentai and 3-D porn. The movie is completely successful at setting up compelling characters, intrigue, and settings, but as so many other reviews suggest, it does fall apart on story. I spent ninety minutes thrilled, ten minutes just plain confused, and then seventeen minutes disappointed when I realized the film had left not only our reality (which is to be expected) but also its own. It could be argued that we ended up in what was left of Diane's reality but I'm working here to force up a story...the film figuratively and literally leaves us stranded in the desert. There's an unpleasant whiff of pedantic moralizing (the more we become involved with sex, violence, chaos, and objectification the more we...uh...become involved with sex, violence, chaos, and objectification) and a few shrill moments that break the otherwise flawless amoral, multinational, descent-into-helpless (and/or desired) submission to the commerce/sex/violence triad trance of the film, but there's still a lovely, liquid quality to the journey that successfully comes to a boil just a few seconds before evaporating completely.
And it is, overall, worth watching. The cinematographer and director come to the table with powerful visions, the soundtrack is the closest thing to an emotional through line we get, the acting is persuasive and absorbing, and the sets are fascinating and fully actualized. Now, if there had only been a writer involved, we might have really had something here...
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| Rating | | | Date | October 05, 2004 | | Summary | Come on | Content
| 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. |
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