Refn Returns to Cannes With 1960s-Inspired 'Her Private Hell' as Violence Recedes
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · May 19
Refn Returns to Cannes With 1960s-Inspired 'Her Private Hell' as Violence Recedes
3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · May 19
Cannes review calls Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Her Private Hell” a hypnotic, hard-to-parse fantasia that drifts through a giant hotel, a dystopian city and postwar Japan.
The film riffs on Norman J. Warren’s 1960s pulp shocker of the same name, using dream logic to blur a planned movie, its characters’ fears and a GI’s search for his missing daughter.
Sophie Thatcher leads as Elle alongside Kristine Froseth, Havana Rose Liu, Diego Calva, Dougray Scott and Charles Melton in a cast of quasi-Lynchian figures.
Unlike Refn’s earlier work, the review says the expected bloodbath never arrives; sexualized violence is dialed back, leaving a slow, mournful mood and lingering sadness.
Is 'Her Private Hell' profound art or just beautiful emptiness?
Why did one film earn a 12-minute ovation and also boos at Cannes?