User Reviews

I'm not quite sure what to make of this film to be honest. Connie Nielsen, Gershon, and Sevigny gave good performances. However, that's not enough is it? The plot was very convoluted and hard to grasp. It was corporate espionage within the porn industry. Which could have been very interesting if the direction was executed properly. But that wasn't the issue as much as the script was. Towards the end there were one too many 'back stabbings" to keep track of, and I wasn't sure who was responsible for what. Gershon's character seemed to have disappeared and another main character did as well with no explanation, at least that's my take on it. I did like the downer ending though, that was a nice touch.

The cinematography was beautiful at many points in the film and the score from Sonic Youth fit in very well with the vibe of the film. Back to the cinematography for a second, I couldn't enjoy it as much I should have since the DVD I viewed it on (region 1 - USA) had a very poor transfer. The image was very pix-elated. Did the production company or distribution company not care enough to do the DVD encoding properly? Anyway, I tried my best to enjoy this film but I could not. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. Apologies to everyone that worked very hard on this project.

I read dozens of reviews about how this film didn't make any sense and was horrible - and I have to say I am more confused by the reviews than by the film. The narrative was continuous, and I had no trouble following the story line at all.

---This is the spoiler part--- The real issue, for some people at least, behind corporate power, torture and sex, is control; they don't actually enjoy any of those activities per se. The plot followed Diane from the point where she thought she was in control (aka "puppet master"), to where she suspected she might not be, to where she lost it and someone else had to take control, to where she had to voluntarily give up limited control, then gave up a lot of control, and finally, involuntarily gave up all control. At first, in control, she is an "ice-queen," and she becomes more and more emotional as she slowly discovers the truth, leading up to the heartbreaking final shot of her face, trapped and condemning.

There was no "rape," both characters are both so burned by porn that their understanding of sex was necessarily kinky and based in fantasy. First the rape fantasy, and then the fantasy of having sex with somebody who was asleep. I think she shot him as an unconscious reaction because her psyche correlated the sex act with a murderous act, as evidenced by her fascination with hellfire and the earlier 3-D porn meets "zombie" kill for all shown earlier on.

Overall I thought it was a fine effort, and I enjoyed it far more than anticipated.

Demonlover: 4 out of 10: Wow what an overlong train wreck of a movie. Before I begin to scratch the surface of the ineptitude of this film let me explain the few things Demonlover does right.

Demonlover does some things very well. It has individual scenes that work on their own either as erotic vignettes; (Chloe Sevigny playing videogames in the nude , an Asian girl seducing a French man at a club after his lover leaves.) or plot actions (dosing a bottled water with Halcion) before the film ventures down the rabbit hole twenty odd minutes in.

The general plot of Demonlover is a French conglomerate is looking to buy an adult anime company. Because of this, a rival Adult anime distributor has sent a corporate spy to put a kibosh on the proceedings. That is the story, there is some silliness about a for-pay torture and bondage site but ther story in a nutshell is an Anime buyout scheme.

So how can a thriller dealing with bondage and Hentai and starring Chloë Sevigny, Gina Gershon, and the hot redhead from Devil’s Advocate, Connie Nielsen, possibly go wrong? Well for one thing, there are cloistered nuns that know more about marketing animated porn online than writer/director Olivier Assayas does. I often complain about movies where the writers and director have clearly never worked in an office (13 Going on 30 for example) but this is over the top. The French, as an example, are worried about a secret website that makes lots of money. If the website makes lots of money… wait for it… it probably is not a secret. Moreover, I am sure that cornering the online Hentai traffic is an unattainable goal. After all, how hard is it to draw new tentacle porn? In addition, I doubt many corporate spies scale the sides of buildings or poison colleagues. Moreover, with the silliest script this side of The Core you cannot depend on the ever confusing and contrived plot.

I know I praised the sex scenes above but with this cast, I was expecting more, a lot more. Also I often did not know where the movie was taking place. (are they in Tokyo or France is a popular game you can play.) Then there is the car chase, at the end, that looks like an outtake from Vanishing Point. (As Tom Servo would have said “Meanwhile in another decade”)The film is overlong, very confusing, somewhat boring and the characters IQ’s seem to drop every scene. After the fifteenth fade to black transition, I actually screamed “end already” at the screen.

In reality, this seems to be a badly done remake of Videodrome. Olivier Assayas is clearly no David Cronenberg. He cannot even tell a simple story in a believable and entertaining manner. Or take advantage of three of the hottest actresses in the business.

I liked the first fifteen minutes, but then it got slow and I started checking the internet for deals on television sets, and then the movie started showing some interesting Japanese animation, so I started watching again. Then there was this horrible annoying music and I faded out and started checking out you-tube videos. Then Gina Gershown showed up and the film started to get interesting, but then I faded out and the next thing I know Gina is being sliced and diced, but then Gina fights back, but then I fade out again. The next thing I know there are a lot of scenes of women yelling at each other and threatening each other. Now,I'm awake again and I'm watching as this nearly bald-headed actor who I think is the boss of something is kissing this woman who I think is a lawyer and they're tearing each other's clothes off. Now... oh my, they're completely naked, but then, what? What just happened? Did she shoot the guy or did someone else? Now the woman is handcuffed, no that's just a bracelet.Someone is giving her pills and they're in a helicopter... Okay, lots of beautiful women, lots of quick hints of violence and pornographic sex, a few violent action sequences and many serious sounding talking scenes. Why is this such a bore?

The major problem with the film is that I don't really care what happens with the lead (Connie Nielsen) character. Apparently the director did not discuss the character with her -- she admits this in an interview on the DVD -- and so she is basically a blank. The Japanese anime characters generate more sympathy. Chloe Sevigny delivers a more emotional and sympathetic performance, but she only pops up for short moments here and there. She also admits in an interview that her scenes were filmed so far apart that she had a hard time making the film. She also said that the director told her nothing about the part. She claims that he never gave her any direction, and that made her "self-conscious".

If you're willing to commit the time to this movie and watch it two or three times, you may get something out of it and see a point. I just found the direction so bad that it wasn't worth it.

First off, the movie's plot DOES make sense. I'll address that below, after the Spoiler Alert.

It's a very interesting movie, thematically, visually, aurally. I summarize the theme as `Who's the top now.' (By `top' I refer to the sadomasochistic term for the dominant partner.) It sees corporate life, in particular, and modern Western culture, in general, as a soulless contest for dominance among individuals, who have no meaningful connection to other people beyond the dominance-submission relationship. Life has been reduced to a video game, in which winning is everything; consequently, life has been reduced to something as "spiritually" and socially empty as a video game. Demonlover is a serious condemnation of the culture we shaped and which in turn shapes us.

Much of the camerawork is relentlessly close-up. There are even relatively long tracking shots where you never have enough distance to see in any one frame much more than a hand, or a skirt, or a car door. It makes the movie exciting to watch, even when all you're watching are yuppies negotiating or driving from one place to another. It also helps present the theme of characters with no moral distance from what they're doing, with no `perspective.' It makes everything Go-Go-Go, just like in a video game, where something is always coming at you, or like in the `go-go' make-a-buck corporate world.

Nobody has faulted the acting. Nielsen is great, a desirable top in the first half, if ever I've seen one! And I've never seen Berling before, but I'd be happy just watching that pleasant slimeball eat and talk for thirty minutes straight. (If you cast HIM in My Dinner with Andre it would instantly have a voluptuously seamy quality!)

As for the pornography scenes, Assayas shows almost nothing. It's an especially NON-explicit movie. Not only is it neither erotic nor titillating, it actually shows less graphic violence, sex, and nudity than the average R-rated movie these days. It is not at all `exploitative.' Critics are taking offense at the meaning and implications of what is shown, not at the graphic content.

SPOILERS BELOW

I've seen reviews that think the plot falls apart after `the first half,' which means after Gershon and Nielsen fight. What happens is that both women black out, and then Sevigny and cohorts clean up the mess, perhaps dispose of Gershon (it doesn't matter), and `rescue' Nielsen. Then she finds out that Sevigny ALSO is an undercover agent. Sevigny in the meantime, while Nielsen is knocked out, has managed to climb the corporate ladder, so that their roles are reversed – both at Volf AND as spies for Magnatronics. (Maybe Sevigny worked for Magnatronics from the start, or maybe she was co-opted later; it doesn't matter.) As someone playing her role in a dominance-submission relationship, she is then stuck as a submissive, and acts it. It's not out of character. She is just no longer the top she thought she was.

The plot doesn't go haywire; it's just that Assayas has fun with us, as we find out that Karen is familiar with the ways of Magnatronics and then, finally, that Sevigny actually works for Berling. In other words, EVERYONE we've met at Volf, except Volf himself, is actually an undercover agent. The company is a shell full of people who are not on its side, who are only out for themselves and are, through greed and deceitfulness, actually in the employ of their employer's enemy. Just as the society is shown to have no values outside of individual success and dominance, so it is shown, to an absurd extreme, within the analogue of the Volf Corporation. The DNA molecule at the end of the movie fits this theme: stripped of the overlay of cultural illusions, it's all just survival of the fittest, each gene-set for itself.

Finally, I want to comment that Nielsen's reaction to Berling in the bed scene makes sense, too. While who is the dominant is undecided, she seems to be into the sex, undoing his belt, etc. But then he asserts his dominance, and the scene turns into a rape. They couldn't really have balanced consensual sex, since it's about winning, not about love. Hence he takes the dominant role, forcing intercourse (even though she clearly was heading there anyway!). Next it's her turn to `win,' his having just trumped her with male physical strength: she uses the equalizer.

This is one of the most frustrating, dull films I've ever seen. I almost wish I'd followed the lead of one strong soul who walked out of the cinema during it. However I sat through the whole thing, and now know that interesting subject matter, a gorgeous cast, and a slick production, do not a good film make. The plot seems designed simply to place the sullen lead female character, Diane, in a position where she can be sexually exploited by the dastardly Demonlover.com. The dialogue is oversubtle to the point of obscurity, and I never started to relate to ANY of the characters. It seems to be trying to pay homage to a swag of genres - but all it does is create a big, boring mess. The music by Sonic Youth is great, but no soundtrack on earth could redeem this one.

[WARNING: SPOILERS]

Olivier Assayas' Demonlover begins as a handsome-looking corporate techno thriller that ranges between France, Japan, and the US and involves cutthroat executives from all three countries speaking all three languages who start out cutting deals and wind up cutting throats. Two products are involved, soft-core porn Japanese animé, of which the new version is 3-D, and a well concealed S & M website that appears to provide the infliction of real physical pain to order. It's a beautiful but too self-indulgent film that ends in utter confusion.

As the film begins, a few executives of a French conglomerate called VolfGroup go to Japan and arrange to buy out TokyoAnimé, whose new 3-D manga porn films are going to wipe out all competition. TokyoAnimé needs the French money to develop their new 3-D technology. Diane (Connie Nielson) drugs a rival in the company to operate beside Hervé (Charles Berling) in these negotiations.

Meanwhile two companies are battling for the rights to Volf's new images on the Web: Mangatronics and Demonlover, and it turns out Mangatronics has recruited Diane to sabotage Demonlover from the inside.

This develops after the French return from their deal in Tokyo and are visited by Demonlover representatives from the USA who're a boorish lot dominated by Elaine (Gina Gershon, seen here as a tattooed, pot smoking babe). Diane sneaks up on Elaine and tries to off her -- or maybe she succeeds -- but no, because she pops right up again, as in a video game.

The S & M website, known as ‘The Hellfire Club,' also belongs to Demonlover, although its reps vehemently deny that. The Hellfire Club keeps coming up and figures prominently at the end – which is strange since Hervé has told the Japanese VolfGroup cannot be into anything illegal, and you wonder why a big conglomerate would allow such a marginal and questionable thing to invade their deal.

Once Diane starts stalking Elaine, the action becomes violent, dreamlike, and confusing; perhaps it's all become a video game, but we're not told that. Diane flirts around with her lower-level associate, played by Chlöe Sevigny, but it's never clear whether they are rivals, enemies, or potential friends. The action becomes a matter of cars, corridors, beds, bars, seductions, and voyages in the rain. The surreal atmosphere is reminiscent of Cocteau or the Jean-Gabriel Albicocco of the mysterious 1961 Girl with the Golden Eyes. Visually it's beautiful, and the sound track is lush, but the plot, which was rather complicated at first, now becomes incomprehensible. A promo piece by the film's US distrubuters openly acknowledges this and excuses it thus: `Demonlover proves most compelling when it feels the least coherent or grounded in reality. Rather than keeping up with exactly which side of the game each major character appears to be playing on at a given moment in the story, viewers are almost better served just going along for the ride, letting the film take them where it will.' Yes, but the ride unfortunately goes nowhere.

Demonlover makes skillful use of extreme close-ups and intense sound. The wedding of image (by Denis Lenoir) and music (by Peter O'Rourke and Sonic Youth) creates a dreamlike, hypnotic effect. But what is happening? Somewhere half way through the plot virtually disintegrates before our eyes. The same promo sheet says it's no more complicated than James Bond movie, but this is unfair, because in Bond movies the good guys and bad guys are usually quite clearly defined, and here they distinctly are not. There is something mean spirited, too, in the way every nationality is abused: the Japanese are patsies, the Americans are boors, and the French are rude and exploitive.

The latter part of Demonlover, in short, gives the appearance of having been edited more for audiovisual effect than for narrative coherence. Despite the intriguing audiovisual experience the film offers, our interest in the plot and the characters with which the film begins is never satisfied.

Another source of dissatisfaction comes from pretensions to timeliness and significance. The filmmakers seem to think that buying and selling animé (with the B-picture tie-in of illicit S & M porn sites) is a significant indicator of media manipulation. But whether it's magazines or 3-D manga, pornography and the imaginative or financial involvement in it are nothing new. The way media is getting into the hands of a smaller and smaller number of mega companies is significant, but that's not Assayas' interest. Anyway, it's usually better not to try too consciously to be cutting edge, as Assayas' declarations show him to have been doing in Demonlover.

The actors are working hard, but their efforts are largely wasted. Connie Nielson, who has the bulk of screen time, is wonderful to look at. Her face is elegant and teases: is it a come-hither or a bugger-off look she is flashing to Charles Berling all the time? One never quite knows. Perhaps she herself wasn't told. Her ambiguity works for quite a while. One gets lost in that face. But it doesn't tell us anything, and since there is no sense of an ending, the later scenes fall flat.

For a movie that has a clear-cut and relevant treatment of cyber crime themes and really has some bearing on the danger of global takeovers and media manipulation -- but also provides the entertainment value of a clearcut thriller plot, take a look at Peter Howitt's 2001 Anti-Trust with Ryan Phillippe and Tim Robbins.