MovieChat Forums > Demonlover (2002) Discussion > Brilliant. Exasperatingly Underrated. In...

Brilliant. Exasperatingly Underrated. Instant Cult. Comments?


This is what I posted at this site as a review. At the end is my question.

"This film is difficult, as all great art should be. Do not let the film's current obscurity deter you. I do not understand it presently, but I usually have a nose for good films (I think). There is something about this film, vague as it may sound, that really got to me. It's like a Lynch cross Fincher cross (the best of) Hitchcock cross Cronenberg (which especially appeals to me) cross Polanski, not in any order. Alienating, not an "audience friendly" film for sure. That term, however, is mostly used by dullard middlebrow critics anyway. Don't trust he one of them. All heathens. If this film looks like that kind of film that would interest you, WATCH IT for goodness sake. This is the kind of film that DEMANDS repeat viewings and your COMPLETE attention and patience. If you cannot fulfill these two criteria, this is not your film. I understand that, there are many (slow, ponderous, 'pretentious') films other people go moggy for that I despise. I have only watched it twice now, with viewings in quick succession (once on DVD).

Notice how most of the negative press concerns how "difficult" the film is, notice how many critics lambaste it by simply listing 'what happens', where, narratively, things go off the rails as far as 'logic' is concerned without saying anything about the film itself. Too literal, darlings. Okay, granted I am not exactly proffering an explanation, but that is simply because I havn't figured it out yet. I intend on finding out, which is justwhat I'm going to do right now.... Perhaps that is the films strength, resisting interpretation. Resisting our attempts to 'unload' it under neat schematic headings like THEMES: 12345 CONTEXT:12345 MESSAGE: 12345 This, I am sure, has a lot to do with any meaning that we should attempt to extract from the text.

Mark my words: This will be one of those cypher type of films that 'slipped through the cracks' in a couple of years, talked about but rarely seen. Shame that is the case with most great art. Shame that it is usually the doing of critics of the time that does great art in. Off the top of my head, in film, Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (can't spell it in French). Derided by critics and yanked out of theaters at the time of its release. Such a comparison may seem to have no basis, but I think that the film is THAT GOOD."

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Do you think that I am on the right track here?? What should I look for in my attempt to figure out this conundrum? Agree? Disagree?

[Please don't tell me to watch something else instead or to stop smoking the pot that I am etc.... I know that this film has its detractors. If you are one of them I understand your position, but this question is directed at people that want to discuss, or at least have something to say. If your criticism will help to enlighten me and others, please, by all means, but please let it not be just of the "I hated it, it sucked. The worst movie I've ever seen" variety.]

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I know that it is weird responding to ones own message, but this is more a continuation & recommendation.

Go to rottentomatoes.com to see what I mean about the uselessness of 2nd rate critics. I especially like Roger Ebert's statement about how he was struck by the films lack of morality. Statements like the following are common:


What gets off to a promising start derails thoroughly due to confused plotting, lack of sympathetic characters and a pointless preoccupation with internet torture websites."
-- Mark Keizer, BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE

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I agree that most of the critics completely missed the core of the film in their viewings. I'm exasperated by people who constantly bemoan the film's lack of traditional story elements. Oddly enough, most of these people would've faulted the film had it contained TOO many traditional elements. Yes, the plot resembles a mobius strip and yes, the characters are by and large amoral or at the least not "sympathetic" enough for a casual viewer. That's part of the whole point of the film: the cyclical, dehumanizing effect of things like the Hellfire Club and coprorate profit and the cold axis they share.

I honestly didn't know if I liked the film when I first saw. I saw it with two friends: one hated it, the other was indifferent. But the more I thought about the film and the more I tried to sift through its patterns, the more I enjoyed it until now I do believe it to be one of the most fascinating films I've ever seen.

Many critics and most audiences will automatically turn off a film once it engages their higher brain functions. I constantly hear people bemoaning "stupid" and "soulless" films like [insert loud summer action film here], yet when they are presented with something that actually IS intelligent and requires active viewing, they are quick to dismiss or ridicule it. I don't understand it.

If you want a critic who took the movie seriously AND enjoyed it, you should check out Salon.com's review (I think it's by Charles Taylor). It's long (3 pages), but one of the best professional reviews I've read of the film:

http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2003/09/19/demonlover/

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[deleted]

fj-10, I don't begrudge your opinion, as I know many people who hated DEMONLOVER. Some have very valid arguments. But I'm down with the folks who love it. It IS an instant cult film in that there's repeat potential galore -- if you're a cine-junkie. It looks totally trippy, the performers are very attractive, and the plot (for the first half at least) is cutting-edge espionage thriller. And it's one of those rare movies that gets better and better the more you reconsider it. But if you're a stickler for story logic, yeah, I can see why you'd hate it.

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[deleted]

Interesting points, Tex. ALPHAVILLE is a great movie and outclasses almost everything. But I don't mind soulless movies when they happen to be about soulless people. DEMONLOVER and CRASH both have been attacked for not having "a heart," but that's not quite fair. Both are futuristic cautionary tales about the dwindling concept of humanity; suggesting that morality or hope will ultimately prevail tends to negate the point of the warning and, in some cases, dumb-down the material. (Worst case example: LOGAN'S RUN.) Godard chose to redeem his characters with the possibility of "love" -- and it worked in 1965. But times have gotten more cynical, and it's OK by me if movies reflect this. Not all works of art need to be cuddled. Godard himself remains a prickly artist to this day, and one could argue that his ALPHAVILLE ending was disingenuous.

My only problem with DEMONLOVER is that its 2nd half isn't as absorbing as its first. But overall, I found the idea of commenting on corporate ethics by making the metaphorical literal (e.g. "cut-throat" business tactics) to be subversively witty, and at times, unexpectedly poignant.

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[deleted]

Fair enough. We all have bad physical reactions to certain movies. The last one for me was ELEPHANT - by the time it ended, my blood was boiling and I wanted to inflict harm on the filmmakers.

And I see your point re the Mexican sequence. For me, too, the bottom nearly dropped out of the movie at that point. It felt like, All this intellectual pretension led to THIS? On the other hand, a case could be made that the hack-ish elements were thematically appropriate. Namely: by selling her soul to commerce, Diane ends up the same (pornographic) product she's been hawking -- a 2-D heroine pursued endlessly by cardboard villains and forced repetitively to submit to their sexual dominance ... her suffering ignored by the same predatory audience she helped to create. Philosophically, it's a satisfying climax. Though perhaps only in the Sadean sense.

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[deleted]

Thanks, likewise, for your responses. My guess is that the end result was a combination of your No. 1 and No. 2 scenarios. I've heard that the movie was shot during or around September 2001, which might explain its fractured nature.

Can't recommend much that I've seen this year. THE CORPORATION and MARIA FULL OF GRACE were probably the best. I HEART HUCKABEES was much better than critics indicated (it, too, is a "cold" movie, and maybe that's why so many hated it). CODE 46, for me, was thematically overambitious. And although it looked and sounded great, it borrowed too much stylistically from DEMONLOVER and ALPHAVILLE. In recent years, I admired MORVERN CALLAR and IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, as well as JESUS' SON and the French FRIDAY NIGHT. I admit my taste is usually polarizing, however. I don't always love watching the movies I end up loving. And what do you recommend?

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[deleted]

Tex, even though I wasn't crazy about CODE 46, it's still worth checking out if you're so inclined. Samantha Morton isn't a half-bad substitute for Anna Karina. And speaking of the spawn of ALPHAVILLE, check out this recent article at salon:

http://archive.salon.com/ent/feature/2004/08/10/rootlessness/index.html

The writer theorizes that a new film genre is evolving (descending from ALPHAVILLE and SANS SOLEIL) that focuses on alienation in the ultra-modern city. It's interesting to think that this might be our generation's answer to film noir.

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[deleted]

All good points, and duly noted. Personally, I don't mind style over substance when it's visionary (as much of Nicolas Roeg's work was in the '70s, for example), and not copied from a BMW ad. Unfortunately, the two formats have merged due to cross-pollenation. Even Ridley Scott, a bona fide cinematic artiste, can sound pretty passionless (i.e. commerce-driven) when discussing some of his theatrical outings. As for Winterbottom, I don't think he's ever met a director he hasn't tried to rip off.

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Thanks for posting that review JSugar. It was an interesting read. I've read some interesting blogs on the film, but Salon is the only mainstream magazine I've seen talk positively of it.



"Rape is no laughing matter. Unless you're raping a clown."

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I am sorry, but I disagree.

One of the reasons I ended up here is because this film disappointed me the same as "freddy got fingered" did. Obviously in a different way. All of the directors you quoted are favourite of mine. But this movie has nothing to do with none of them. I don't understand technical issues, but the way the camera is used just gives me headache and is without soul. The entire movie maybe wants to give this "no soul" impression and I thinks that, after all, achieves its goal. but I don't know if it's a prejudice I have against french, I think ,as Dostoevskij wrote, French have a good form but no content. The only part of the movie I appreciated is the dialogue in the japanese restaurant.
I know this isn't joel schumacher's movie, so it doesn't show much for the big audiences, but I think that what I like in Lynch-Cronenberg, or Fincher is even what I can see of bad. These directors are pretty explicit in the images if not in the message or the plot, their cinema can be visonary.
This demonlover is empty as a crystal glass. It's cold, it's cool, but would be better with something inside. Fill it with what you prefer, I like strong taste, but maybe even water would do.
Anyway if this movie has anything original that I didn't notice, because I was distracted by feeling I was losing my time watching it, don't hesitate to tell me. I accept critics and points of view different from mine.


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"I don't know if it's a prejudice I have against french, I think ,as Dostoevskij wrote, French have a good form but no content."

Especially given that the film is basically a dialectic about the relationships among the French, American & Japanese film culture. Assayas himself calls criticizes French Cinema for becoming solipsistic & conventional, stealing bits from US & Japanese Cinema instead of actually creating something themselves. Having seen "Irma Vep" (which is thematically/narratively/visually similar) "Demonlover" is the natural extension of this theme.
Demonlover is a pretty hallucinatory film that explores alot of ground all at once. Granted it's a pretty intense experience, and hard to understand if you're looking for a linear, easy-to-grasp action flick.
The characters' tendency to switch languages mid-stream says as much about the characters themselves as the theme of the film. It's only in moments of extreme stress, when the characters feel they MUST be understood they speak english, otherwise the white characters communicate exclusively in French.
However as we discover, towards the end that Diane's name & identity are all a fraud, it's important to note that we never do learn her real name, she remains just as much a cypher at the end of the film as any other grande dame of the French Cinema (Huppert, Deneuve).
The jerking camera-work is important bc Assayas is showing us the unspeakable thru a filter, so to speak. The truly horrific he leaves up to our imagination, but he will bring us close to "the edge" but only in herky-jerky moments, which suggest what subjective experience is like not only for "Zora" but for the surfers who access the Hellfire Club.

Hardly an empty crystak glass...

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Okay, it's late and I'm tired, so I'll try to make this quick and coherent.

I am of two minds on this film. First of all, I set my vcr to record the film when I found out it was coming on last week and my tape ran out right after Karen gives Diane the copy of the tape, so I had to wait an entire week until the film aired again tonight, and frankly, the ending pissed me off (ie I was let down).

Now, the film itself isn't terrible. It's very original and I especially love love love Connie Nielsen's acting. And as much as I love a film like Mulholland Drive (which I sort of compare this to), Demlover started off with a plot and mystery and suspense... and then just crapped it all away and gave us an ending that looked like they ran out of money and filmed it on a single weekend.

I figured she would end up as one of the Hell Fire Club girls, but it took forever to get there. They handcuff her, put a bag over her head, lead her into the basement of some secluded house and then... cut to the next scene where she just has some needle marks on her arm. Then there is that great scene with the bald-headed guy in the resturant (probably my favorite scene) and then she shoots him in the head, and it's never delt with. She willingly allows herself to be taken captive and willingly takes a pill that knocks her out-- she had to assume what was going to happen-- but attempts to escape (which means she didn't want to be taken captive). I still wasn't sure why she was still hanging around with two murders under her belt (and I was hoping Elise and Karen would be 3 and 4).

Okay, I'm finished. I didn't hate it, I might even watch it again, but the only thing I can say about the ending is that it's anticlimactic. Interesting? Yes. Confusing? Absolutely! Excellent? Well... not exactly. But Nielsen is the true saving grace of the film. Without her, or an equalled skilled actress, I do think I would have hated the film.


"Action is how men express romance on film." -- Kurt Wimmer

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This is a brilliant film. Olivier Assayas is one of the greatest filmmakers in the world today. It is a shame that his brilliant "Clean" hasn't been released in the States yet.

"Yes, I'd like a cheeseburger, please, large fries and a cosmopolitan!"

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A friend of mine bought thsi over last night and while I was dreading it but hoping for some Gina Gershon sleaze I was pleasantly surprised. A great cautionary futuristic tale of business gone mad. Its great to see the main charcater go from almost corporate top dog to bottom of the barrel. Its good to see cold calculating people outsmart themselves now and again. I agree with with it reminding em of Videodrome but there is just as much new ground covered in here as that seminal classic. mind boggling, thought provoking and essential! I loved it, though iw as mentally exhausted by the end.

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I just watched this movie and i think it's got to be one of the worst movies i've ever seen. It tries to do to many things and never fully accomplishes any of them, almost as if the director refused to commit to a single concept, or even a small group of interconnected concepts. The movie starts out with some kind of corporate subterfuge plot involving buyouts and coverups with members of one company infiltrating another and trying to sabotage business realtions with yet another company. All of a sudden that's no longer an issue, Diane is no longer working for Megatronics and the whole corporate aspect vanishes from the film. Characters drift in and out of the film without any aparrent significance (the bald guy, Gina Gershon, the woman originally responsible for the contract). Overall there is very little character development, they are all very two-dimensional, the viewer never gets a grasp of their true motivations, they all seem like automatons. The story seems to try to imitate many of the best surreal directors, for example the scene in Mexico at the end is vaguely reminesent of the scene in Lost Highway where M is in the house in the middle of the desert and Bill Pullman is having sex on the hood of the car. The torture web-site is almost directly taken from the pay-per-view torture TV in videodrome. This is the same director that did Irma Vep, and the scene where Diane goes out the hotel window to steal the demonlover info from Gershon could have been leftover footage from Irma Vep spliced into the movie and i don't think it would have made a bit of difference. The cinematography was terrible. It looked for the most part like footage from an on-location war documentary. I think Blair Witch had steadier camera work than Demonlover. A certain amount of shaking is okay to create atmosphere, but when you're having trouble keeping your subjects in frame then it's too much (i have the same issue with Bourne Supreamacy). And all the super-closeups! The camera does not have to be that close to everything. There is a scene when Chloe and Diane are in the car and the camera is outside of the car looking through the window and for some reason they didn't think to use a depolarizer on the shot so you can't actually see through the window. I work in independent filmmaking. I've worked on films that cost $1500 to shoot and we were able to get a depolarizer for through car window shots, they can't be that expensive to rent. I was watching it on my LCD computer screen so it may not have been as good of picture quality as a TV but it seemed to have a lower than average picture quality like a low quality film stock, almost like late 70's adn 80's French films. I really didn't see much point to the film as a whole, none of the charcters are sympathetic. One post above said:
"By selling her soul to commerce, Diane ends up the same (pornographic) product she's been hawking -- a 2-D heroine pursued endlessly by cardboard villains and forced repetitively to submit to their sexual dominance ... her suffering ignored by the same predatory audience she helped to create."
I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, that makes sense. And in a way it almost makes it a social commentary. But i think that overall it did a very poor job of communicating that. Without the character development we don't sympathize with the characters, and without that, the film is just as much of a spectacle as the torture videos and has about as much substance. If the charcters had been developed more, if the camera movement had been smoothed out more, and if the director would just accept that he is not the next David Lynch and cannot make disjointed films the way Lynch does and pull it off, the film might have been decent, but unfortuneately this is not the case. I don't think the director is pretentious here, or that this is some kind of ultra-surreal avant garde piece that wasn't meant to be understood, i think it makes sense to him, but i think he should have ran the script by some more objective editors before going into pre-production (and invested in a tripod, or at very least a steady cam). It just feels to me like a film that was going for something and missed its mark.
And no i am not someone who can't stand films that demand higher brain function to appreciate. I watch hundreds of films a year and i make a point to avoid the mainstream cookie cutter movies and pulp garbage that passes for cinema. Most of the films i watch are either classics or independent films and about a third of the films i see each year are foriegn (i've seen films from roughly 35 different countries).

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> Do you think that I am on the right track here??

No. It sucks hard, really. The script simply doesn't know where it's going and ends making no sense at all. It's really good until the Japan part - i.e., while it makes some sense - and then it degrades into a "who will think about the children?!" underground porn plot. Really, what's the point? It should have sticked to the main plot, not diverge ridiculously like it does. It's an exercise in how a script should NOT be written.

Anyway, there are good characters (while they still make some sense - which is not for long) and Chloe Sevigny appears naked for some seconds (as always).

It seems to me that you're seeking some reason to justify the fact you like it to yourself. Get over it! Is sucks and you like it, simple as that. There's nothing wrong about it. I like "The Cube" but I KNOW it sucks, and I live with this.

[]s
FZ

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This movie was a colossal bore and a complete letdown.

In many ways, this is an anti-movie. Aren't movies supposed to entertain? When I say entertain, I don't mean entertain by showing a 2-hour music video that makes absolutely no sense to anyone except the filmmaker. What's the point of that?

The cardinal sin in any form of storytelling (film, prose, theater,..etc) is to lose your audience through boredom and logic loopholes, which this movie accomplishes on a grand scale. One good way to cover up these problems is to label the project an "art film".

They should have "High Concept Art" warning labels on DVD's.

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Noilie,

Your diatribe about why this movie is "brilliant" really makes me chuckle. How can you call this entertainment?

This will go down in history as one of the worst movie failures ever.

Here's why:

This guy had a terrible script (the first sign of trouble), that had a poorly executed story.

He then thought "let's see, why don't we put attractive people in it who speak French, then switch to English? Then, we create usless, boring scenes and sequences that defy logic to really throw the audience off. Brilliant, huh? Then, we need to keep people from falling asleep, bolting for the exits, or smashing their TV, so let's be shocking and show some x-rated anime, nudity and S&M stuff. Boy, I really am a genius! Did I mention I'm French, and an artist? That will mean critics will love this, and convince everyone that this is a masterpiece"

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[deleted]

I saw an advance screening of this introduced by director Olivier Assayas. I never understood its lack of critical success.

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I enjoyed it, up to a point. The second half of the movie felt like Videodrome being directed by David Lynch, but filmed and then edited by someone with Asperger's Syndrome.

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most honest and spot-on criticism i've heard yet

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See my other comment for more in-depth analysis.

~Rebel

www.billionairebrothers.com

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[deleted]