‘Her Private Hell’ movie review: A visually arresting giallo tribute with exhaustingly derivative provocation
The latest thriller from Nicolas Winding Refn is an overindulgent slog that’s occasionally heightened by its strong performances.
Nicolas Winding Refn is a filmmaker who can be as frustrating as he is brilliant, given that he’s carved a lane for himself where he is impenetrable to revision. It’s commendable that someone of Refn’s track record is able to make works that exist outside of the traditional studio system and are not subjected to interference creatively; at the same time, his aversion to commerciality has turned into a disdain for functionality, and his obsession with being provocative has begun to feel like a mad dash for relevance.
Her Private Hell is nearly a pastiche of Refn’s past work because of how much of a ‘greatest hits’ assembly it feels like, but it’s also his most thematically bare. It’s not worthy of being completely disregarded because of the singularity of its craft, but it’s disappointing that a filmmaker who once felt groundbreaking has become predictable.
Refn’s work frequently alludes to other genres and influences, but Her Private Hell is perhaps his most straightforward homage. Set in a futuristic city engulfed in a mysterious fog, the film follows the movie star Elle, played by Sophie Thatcher, as she meets for a potential job opportunity at a luxurious sky-rise that is ripped straight out of Blade Runner. It’s in this vast hotel that other characters are introduced, including the blissfully stupid model Hunter, played by Kristine Froseth, and Elle’s former best friend, Havana Rose Liu’s Dominique, who is now married to her father, Dougray Scott’s Johnny Thunders.
While Her Private Hell begins as an interminable series of overarching conversations between the three young women, the roughest outline of a narrative emerges when a mysterious killer known as ‘The Leather Killer’ (Jason Hendil-Forssell) is identified as a threat within the hazy metropolis.
It’s hardly enough story to justify a 110-minute running time, but Her Private Hell has another segment that’s focused on the former soldier Private K, played by Charles Melton, who is searching for his daughter and her abusers. It’s during Melton’s scenes that the film comes alive as a gloriously pulpy yakuza thriller where the odd prose and stone-faced seriousness of the characters actually fit within the seedy criminal underworld. Although the presence of a serial killer would seemingly intensify these stakes, the film is surprisingly devoid of tension in between its instances of ultraviolence. Refn is clearly attempting to whittle down the story to its most foundational core, and the result is a film devoid of nuance.
The complication of critiquing any filmmaker identified as an auteur is that a majority of their decisions are intentional, and Refn is certainly a filmmaker who would justify making the audience irate as part of his artistic statements. While he has made many films that are polarising, Her Private Hell’s commentary is both misguided and surface-level; whether it’s deep sincerity or sneering contempt that motivates him, the stoic, simplistic depiction of the creative industry is a bore to watch, and feels as if he is taking shots at an unknown target.
There’s not a formal reality to the profession that Elle is in, and the attempts to draw parallels between the sci-fi film she’s starring in and the banality of the ‘real’ world stutter, because neither has anything to go off of beyond the aesthetics.
The visual design of the film is also a step back for the filmmaker, who had experimented with neon-dripped cosmic expressionism long before it became a cliché. Much of this is due to the lack of fluidity within the movements and how nakedly transparent the lack of real locations is. While he’s yet to officially endorse AI, the style of Her Private Hell is unambiguously similar to that of generated content, regardless of whether Refn actually used the technology. When compared to the psychic beauty of Only God Forgives, the glittery underworld of The Neon Demon, or the supernatural undertones of Copenhagen Cowboy, Her Private Hell is a regression that reaches nearly parodical levels of self-involvement for Refn.
The characters are too confined by their most basic attributes to have the spark of someone like Ryan Gosling’s unnamed protagonist in Drive, but many of the performances stand out. This is Thatcher’s third genre film role in which she plays a blank-faced woman overwhelmed by a reality-shaking threat to her existence; she was brilliant as an artificial lover in Companion and a Mormon missionary in Heretic, and her performance in Her Private Hell might even be more impressive because she makes the most inane dialogue sound somewhat inspired.
Liu is also quite memorable in a catty, vindictive role that does feel intentionally satirical, and between her other great performances this year in Tuner and Power Balled, she is poised to be a major star.
Surprisingly enough, Her Private Hell is at its most sincere during K’s quest to find his child, serving as a reminder that Refn is himself a father to two young daughters. Since the idea of parenthood is only projected in the abstract (as the dynamic between Elle and her father is totally bizarre), it does feel as if Refn connected to the fear of trying to raise children in a world predisposed to putting women in danger. Perhaps, Elle’s transformation from a one-note actor to a final girl was his attempt to signify the importance of the women in his own films, as, even at its most exploitative, Her Private Hell never seems to hate its characters.
There are enough visceral qualities here to warrant morbid curiosity from Refn’s fans, and the terrific score from frequent Brian De Palma collaborator Pino Donaggio adds a tremendous amount to the atmosphere. Refn’s recent revelation that he survived a near-death experience is a reminder that cinema is better off when he is making films, and while Her Private Hell is a misfire, it could never be mistaken for someone else’s work.
