Her Private Hell

This movie is fantastically pretty and is really well acted. However, it is so surreal that it becomes nonsensical at times, and you lose focus and interest when the story seems to disregard itself in order to produce a visual spectacle. I can't give it less than fifty given how well produced and well acted it is, but this movie is not worth the time unless you are into this type specifically. It is simply not a movie meant to be watched.

"Elle" (Sophie Thatcher) is walking through the neon-lit lobby of her exclusive hotel building when she encounters the sleeping "Hunter" (Kristine Froseth) whom she appears to know? She invites her upstairs where "Dominique" (Havana Rose Liu) soon appears. What becomes immediately quite clear is that money is no object for this woman, her step-mother, and that "Elle" is a troubled soul. Not as troubled, perhaps, as "Private K" (Charles Melton) who is wandering the dimly-lit streets below trying to find out what happened to his missing daughter. His only clue comes from two enigmatic ateliers - who might as well be witches - who suggest that his only route to closure will come from his apprehending the feared "Leather Man" who has an habit of sneaking up on defenceless women and quite literally tearing them apart. With him facing the ire of the Yakuza and the local cops, and "Elle" having to reconcile her turbulent relationship with "Dominique", the scene is set for one of the least cohesive thrillers I think I've ever seen. What was most interesting from the intro that preceded this film was that auteur Nicolas Winding Refn expressed a professional loathing for all things AI, yet this film did look like it could readily have featured much from the designs of an artificial mind. It has a soul-less sterility to it that may well be the point he is trying to make - a world in which we meander aimlessly whilst constantly looking for a stimulation that can no longer come from drink or drugs or even sex. But the very methods he chooses to make his point struggle to resonate at all except for Melton who does manage to imbue his character with something of the desperate to him - as if he had been lobotomised without his child. The remainder of the story, though, delivers very little save for quite a poignant gift to her from her father of an hatchet that you just know will come in handy at the end. I didn't hate it, but it felt like being being covered by a blanket that didn't keep you warm in an increasingly cold room and I left the cinema quite disappointed. It's perhaps just a little too self-indulgent of NWR or maybe I just wasn't on his wavelength?