Nicolas Winding Refn's film on search for beauty 'The Neon Demon' presented at Cannes

Record ID: 102872

  • Title: Nicolas Winding Refn's film on search for beauty 'The Neon Demon' presented at Cannes
  • Date: 20th May 2016
  • Summary: CANNES, FRANCE (MAY 20, 2016) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTRESS, ELLE FANNING, SAYING: "You have to kind of separate... When I was younger I kind of looked at going to do films as like someone going to do soccer practice or going to play match in a way, because I'm like 'Oh it's just my extra-curricular activity'. I'll go off and do a movie for a little bit. But once I'm home, I mean, there is that, you're always thinking of characters and I day-dream a lot so it's always in my head in that way. But once you're home you're home and you have to separate it."
  • Embargoed: 4th June 2016 14:38
  • Keywords: Cannes Film Festival Nicolas Winding Refn Elle Fanning
  • Location: CANNES, FRANCE / VARIOUS UNKNOWN FILMING LOCATIONS
  • City: CANNES, FRANCE / VARIOUS UNKNOWN FILMING LOCATIONS
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Film
  • Reuters ID: LVA0074IM4AJ1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Nicolas Winding Refn split opinion at the Cannes Film Festival this week with some people walking out of the press screening of his "The Neon Demon" but most reviews were positive.
    Boos and cheers in equal measure delighted the Danish director whose essay on obsession with beauty sees Elle Fanning, as aspiring model Jesse, arrive in Los Angeles and quickly become a designer's muse and an object of desire and jealousy.
    "So the idea of the movie was, when I talked to Elle, 'Well let's make a movie about the obsession of beauty'. You know, which is very standard, it's in our television, it's in our print, it's in our social media, it's in our movies, it's what you guys write about. But what's going to happen when the longevity no longer exists? Meaning that, how we define beauty and length shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. At the same time it also seems to become younger and younger and younger. And that to me is terrifying, I have two daughters," he told a news conference on Friday.
    Winding Refn said that after 'Only God Forgives', which had already divided critics in Cannes, he wanted to make a film with a 16-year old girl, and that meeting Elle Fanning had been decisive.
    "What was going to be next? Well obviously I could live out my perverse dream of being a 16-year old girl, which I think every man has inside of him. But in order to do that, I needed to find the girl. And I was blessed with this opportunity in my house in L.A. of Elle Fanning agreeing to come meet me. And I was like 'Oh my God, you are me! Would you like to make a movie together? And it has to be about you because you are 16 and I can channel through that but you would take the lead," he said.
    Fanning, who started making films very young but said she was still living with her parents who would help her not lose her head, said she believed Los Angeles was the "neon demon" but she managed to separate her life from her character's.
    "You know for a while I kind of thought that L.A. was the neon demon in a way because that city is so haunting but so enticing and it sucks you in but it will spit you out," she said, adding: "When I was younger I kind of looked at going to do films as like someone going to do soccer practice or going to play match in a way, because I'm like 'Oh it's just my extra-curricular activity'. I'll go off and do a movie for a little bit. But once I'm home, I mean, there is that, you're always thinking of characters and I day-dream a lot so it's always in my head in that way. But once you're home you're home and you have to separate it."
    Winding Refn, who won Best Director in Cannes with "Drive" in 2011, didn't seem upset with the mixed welcome the film received.
    "If I don't split, what are we doing here? You know, art is about, art is not about good or bad guys, those days are over. The Internet has changed so film as an art form is about an experience, good or bad, as your chinese food or your pepper steak or whatever French bistro you had last night. Creativity is about reactions and reactions is the essence of an experience. The essence of an experience is planting thought. If you don't react, what are you doing here? Why would you waste your time here? There are so many other things in life that are worth doing than watching a movie or TV show just to consume time. That's dumb," he said.
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