DEVS

Ultra Violet

DEVS
2020 UK/USA
BBC/BBC iPlayer, FX

Warning: Very minor spoilers about the plot set up from episode one.

So if you’ve been reading my reviews for a while now you’ll know that I’ve never been that keen on Alex Garland's work but, here I am in the middle of Covid 19 lockdown and the trailer I saw for this eight episode miniseries called DEVS looked pretty intriguing so I figured I’d at least give the first episode a go. Well good for him, he actually managed to keep me watching the whole eight episodes and I kinda enjoyed thinking my way through what is, on the surface at least, the illusion of a fairly dense text. As it is, you will figure out almost everything fairly quickly and the simplicity of the idea is something that every young toddler thinks of at some point in their early life, I suspect, but the presentation of this, while it has its ‘ever so slight’ faults, chalks this up as being much better than his previous (although equally obvious) credited movie works either as writer or director... namely Ex Machina (which I reviewed here) and Annihilation (which I reviewed here).

The plot, as much as I can reveal without totally spoiling that central premise you are working your way towards in the first episode (it’s pretty much spelled out very clearly after that) involves a central protagonist called Lily, played by my favourite dancing robot lady from Ex Machina (and she was also in Annihilation), actress Sonoya Mizuno. The story starts off as a mystery when, at the end of the first episode, Lily’s boyfriend Sergei (played by Karl Glusman from Love, reviewed here), who has just been promoted to the DEVS section at their dream job IT company workplace known as AMAYA, is killed by the chief of security for an act of industrial espionage. This is presented to the world as a suicide but Lily, obviously, knows better and so she finds her computer genius ex-boyfriend (played by Jin Ha) to investigate further. This brings down the wrath of the security head plus an almost but not quite convoluted espionage story into the mix when, really, the story details don’t matter because it’s just a mystery to lure you into thinking about the real thing... what happens at DEVS.

And that’s where it falls down a little because, nice as the presentation of the central problem is... and it is really nice to look at with an extraordinary soundtrack comprised of some needle drops plus original score by regular musical collaborators Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury... you’ve already kind of figured out what you need to know by the end of the first episode and, if you haven’t guessed it already by then, you’ll certainly have it in the bag by the last episode. This is unfortunate because, yeah, you will be able to predict where the ending is going to take you and, despite talks of the nature of the work being ‘monitored’ at DEVS, it does seem to be a somewhat less than satisfactory conclusion to the whole thing. A kind of hollow victory for Lily, the boss of DEVS (Forest, outstandingly played by Nick Offerman) and his girlfriend (played by Alison Pill) which is only, to be honest, held together by the truly wonderful performances of these three.

Okay, my main problem with DEVS is also a problem with my overall perception of it because, I’m going to say it out straight and say that it does feel kind of padded in places and this storyline could have been much punchier and dramatic as a movie, rather than stretched out over eight long episodes. However, the contradiction for me is in the fact that, if it had been presented as a much shorter movie, the obviousness of the central premise and ending would have been a real turn off for me and I would probably have slated it. As it happens though, I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would and that’s because of all the visual distraction overlaying that starting point, I think.

That being said, the very slight ‘twist’ on a cosmetic level of the title of the show and the name of the work section, DEVS, is not something I saw coming. I’m not really that impressed with it but it is quite clever... I just wish it meant more than what it does in the grand scheme of things in the show. I’m trying to keep this as spoiler free as I can so I won’t reveal it here but, if you’re wondering why my review title isn’t the standard pun yet has nothing to do with the content of the series, that’s because it’s a decoder key for the title of the show. Crack that and you will crack what is, honestly, a very minor spoiler.

There is one thing I would really complain about, though... and that’s the use of needle drop music at the start of one of the episodes. The piece is Steve Reich’s Come Out from 1966 and it’s a nice piece where the recorded phrase ‘come out to show them’ (I won’t get into the political implications of the recording here) is synched against a copy of it and each looped on two tape recorders at very slightly different speeds. As just over twelve minutes elapse, the two go more and more gradually out of phase and the way the human brain perceives them, often as a wooshing sound like a train on tracks, is constantly shifting as the fluid relationship between the two copies of the same recording continues. So basically it’s a track about what man calls ‘time’ and your perception of it through sound. Which is why I didn’t appreciate Garland’s use of it in the episode where the whole thing is chopped up and spliced together into about a minute or two... that’s not the point of the music at all although, I appreciate Garland was also maybe making a comment about the way analogue recording devices can be hijacked and re-used for a different purpose in the digital world.

But... yeah, nothing much more I want to say about DEVS, I think. A nice production with some nice direction from Garland (better perhaps than the writing although he certainly has an ear for dialogue), nice music, some outstanding performances and a certain sense of intrigue which, although it kinda falls flat at the end, keeps you mostly entertained as you go through the episodes. Also, if you’re a fan of Garland’s other stuff, then this sits right alongside it thematically and is probably right up your street. So give this one a whirl, for sure.

Love

Noé Escape

Love
France/Belgium 2015
Directed by Gaspar Noé
Artificial Eye Blu Ray Zone B

Love is a movie which includes unsimulated sex scenes, directed by Gaspar Noé, who also directed a movie I quite liked called Enter The Void (reviewed here)... and one which I didn’t care for all that much called Irreversible. Whether I like his movies or not, though, I do quite like his style of direction and presentation and so I thought I’d give Love a go.

The film is one which kind of teases the viewer with the pretence of having a story to tell... one might say it even has a bit of a mystery at its heart... but it doesn’t actually concentrate on that mystery at all and neither, it seems, is the director interested in giving us any solutions or closure to the so called plot set up. Instead it uses this starting point to explore the past relationship between the film’s central protagonist Murphy (played by Karl Glusman) and his ex-girlfriend Electra (played her by Aomi Muyock) from the viewpoint of looking back on it from his present situation with his current girlfriend and their young son.

Now I’ve got nothing wrong with movies that use a hook as a starting point and give no closure to that hook. Anyone paying attention to my reviews will know that I don’t value story as a major ingredient in a film anyway. In fact, last year I reviewed Sasha Grey’s second novel, The Janus Chamber (right here) which does exactly the same thing and even has this kind of ‘anti-structure’ referenced and justified within the text of the book. So I’m all quite cool with that.

That being said, the film wasn’t that much of an intriguing or fun watch, it has to be said. I didn’t dislike it too much but then I wasn’t as intrigued as I had been by Enter The Void so... not greatly enthused about this one, in all honesty.

The film starts with a long held shot of Murphy and Electra naked in bed and playing with each other’s genitals. It’s a nicely composed shot and I’ve got absolutely nothing against films which use real sex in them (theatrically released or otherwise). As Electra masturbates Murphy’s penis, we hear Eric Satie on the soundtrack... either one of the Gymnopédies or Gnoissiennes. We then jump cut in time to the sound of Murphy’s phone as he lays in the same bed with his current gal on New Year’s Day. As things go on around him and we learn that the phone call was former girlfriend Electra’s mother trying to contact him (because Electra has disappeared off the face of the earth) we hear his internal monologue as a voice over on the soundtrack... something which continues throughout the movie.

The film then starts flashing backwards and forwards in time and space as we explore various ‘scenes’ from his relationship with Electra, learn how much Murphy feels he still really loves her and also hear of his disenchantment with his current lady and the domestic cage which his life has become. And, as we hear him talk to himself and constantly calling himself a ‘loser’, it doesn’t take long to figure out the truth about this character... he really is a ‘loser’. I’m sorry but I could work up absolutely no sympathy for this fellow at all, no matter how well performed all the leads in this are (including Murphy). I kept asking myself why anybody would want to hang out with this whiny and constantly hypocritical guy when they didn’t have to.

Asides from the naturalistic and often very good performances from all the key actors, the film is full of the long takes and fluid camerawork which we are now accustomed to within the cinema of Gaspar Noé. Also, asides from constant shout outs to the director himself in one guise or another (for example, Murphy’s son is called Gaspar), Murphy is also a budding director and that allows for a fair few visual and audio references to keep fans of cinema interested in this.

The lightning schemes are often quite ‘impressionistic’, for example and, during one sequence where Murphy is wandering the streets at night and sifting through all the puzzle pieces of Electra in his head, the colour and light combined with the figure he is cutting through the city (with his back to us, half the time) absolutely invoked the ghost of Travis Bickle in Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver. Which makes sense since, in the time period when he is with Electra, Murphy has a Taxi Driver poster in his apartment. It’s a shame the music on this particular sequence I’m thinking of doesn’t go the whole hog and uses Bernard Herrmann’s last ever movie score on the soundtrack too.

However, there are some quite nice and unexpected movie score references throughout the running time... such as when we see a sex scene depicting the inception of Murphy’s son and it’s scored with Gaslini & Goblin’s music from Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso (aka Deep Red). There’s another surprising, musical choice when Murphy and Electra visit a swinger’s club (on the recommendation of a police officer who arrests Murphy at one point) and the whole orgiastic sequence is underscored with John Carpenter’s main theme from his film Assault On Precinct 13.

It’s nice little surprises like this... along with the director’s usual flair for unexpected spectacle such as a scene with a camera POV inside a character’s vagina, with Murphy’s penis thrusting towards camera before ejaculating into a swirly, kaleidoscopic image... which keep the audience interested in a film which has, after all, a truly unsympathetic central protagonist. Or the interesting way the director will sometimes mask the sides of a shot in darkness to focus into the centre of a composition. Little touches like these keep the film from being boring although, it has to be said, in terms of any real substance to the characters or follow through on their actions, it’s kinda light.

Love is not a film I’d necessarily recommend to many people as a jumping on point for Gaspar Noé but fans of this director will probably be okay with it. The UK, Artificial Eye Blu Ray also has a 3D print of it on the disc, if you have the facilities to take advantage of this at home.

The Neon Demon

Eye Candy

The Neon Demon
2016 France/Denmark/USA
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
UK cinema release print.

Okay... so I was not too impressed with the other Nicolas Winding Refn movie which I saw a few years ago called Drive (which I reviewed here). I haven’t been too keen on reuniting my acquaintance with the work of this director but the publicity surrounding this latest movie by him, the references to the influence of Mario Bava in his work and the fact that this one was “Booed!” out of Cannes sounded like this might be a promising movie. Well, in some ways I suppose it is but, like my previous experience with his work, it seemed like this one was a visual feast of a candy shell, protecting an empty centre of absolutely no substance whatsoever.

The film is a hard look at one young model’s rapid ascent in the modern fashion photography industry and the consequences of that astonishing progress on her as the film plays out towards its, almost inevitable, conclusion. I say inevitable because once you meet the various characters in this film, one of the things you will notice is that they all stay perfectly on track to fulfil the kind of single minded stereotypes they already inhabit at the start of the movie. There is no real character progression, it seemed to me, and although the conclusion is a slightly different presentation of the logical destiny of the central character Jesse, played by Elle Fanning, it’s certainly nothing new and I think the influences the director so blatantly likes to wear on his sleeve are a fair match for the nature of the ending.

The film has been promoted as some kind of horror/thriller film and the title of The Neon Demon certainly does a lot to support this kind of perception of it but I think, at the end of the day, this is quite misleading and if you are expecting that kind of movie (which I wasn’t, as it happens), then you may be a little disappointed with it. I’ve already mentioned Mario Bava being cited as a key influence but I think Refn is very much influenced by the Italian giallo genre as a whole, on this one (my personal take on the Italian Giallo movie can be found here), and the stupendous shot compositions on display here, with washes of intense colour pitched against each other with very meticulously crafted designs, certainly owes more than a little to various gialli over the years. That being said, in terms of the actual story content, it is in no way a parallel for the highly saturated mystery thrillers that defined that genre and, again, I really don’t think people will be that impressed with the lack of plot on show here.

The way Refn splits the screen off into vertical slabs of colour and space to highlight his players within the frames and leaves large areas of the shot without any people in it, sometimes focusing on empty space completely, rather than following the actors when they walk off the screen, certainly hits some of the stylistic traits of both ‘the cinematic giallo’ and a European sensibility to film-making in general. And, of course, combined with the deep reds, purples and greens which pop out of the screen at you, even from the fantastic opening credits, the whole effect seems to be borrowed or copied from a mid 1960’s to mid 1980s Italian mindset. Contrasted with the almost 1950s pastel colours he uses when the main protagonist leaves her professional environment and returns to the shabby motel run by Keanu Reeves’ character.

Even the actor who plays Jesse’s ‘boyfriend’, Karl Glusman, bears a striking physical resemblance, in my mind at least, to Antoine Saint-John who played the title character in the splendid giallo movie The Killer Must Kill Again. And without trying to give away too much about what happens in this one, the content could be likened to the conclusion of a movie which is very often mistaken for being an Italian giallo, but which isn’t really one itself. That film being The Perfume Of The Lady In Black (aka Il Profumo Della Signora In Nero... which I reviewed here).

Of course, given the somewhat plotless subject matter on display here, I would imagine the director could quite easily defend his art here (and it certainly is ‘fine art’ the way the camera and cinematic palette is wielded on this one) by pointing out his product is as shallow and vapid as the profession he is focusing his lens on but... nah! I don’t think I’d personally want to let him off the hook with that one. What he does shoot, though, is astonishingly beautiful and he has particular visual fetishes on display here which take on an almost obsessive quality throughout the film. For instance, he uses a lot of mirrors and reflective surfaces which allow him to further craft clever compositions involving those split sections while simultaneously enhancing the agenda of vanity and obsession with physical beauty in the world of fashion photography.

Another thing he does is that he seems to be able to intensify and capture a bizarrely drugged out quality with the majority of the character’s eyeballs, specifically of the actresses playing the fashion models, which drove me crazy trying to figure out how he lit his subjects so brightly while still having their peepers fixed and dilated... contrary to the laws of physics. One wonders if a lot of the actresses were wearing contact lenses. One also wonders if this signifies certain potential supernatural properties to some of the characters. Again, I don’t want to get too literal here because I’m trying not to post spoilers on this but, the relationship that make-up artist Ruby, played absolutely brilliantly by Jena Malone, and a few of the models have with Elle Fanning’s Jesse character make you wonder if the central protagonist’s final fate is pre-ordained from the first time Jesse meets Jenna, or if her ultimate expulsion from her safety net was prompted merely by a knee-jerk response to something she does near the end of the movie.

One also wonders if any of the characters in this movie are a direct metaphor for Elizabeth Bathory, perhaps, who has been portrayed in many ways in many movies over the years.

However, one of the things I will credit the director for is his willingness to create an open ended atmosphere, especially in the aftermath of a certain scene near the finish, which neither confirms or denies the potential for an almost supernatural taint to the proceedings on show. My personal conviction is that the very last few minutes of the movie, while pushing the potential of an other-wordly enhancement to some of the characters, almost immediately frustrates it again by the actions of another character, after one of the central antagonist’s self inflicted demise. However, I’m sure it’s something people will have a mixed response to.

As for me... well, the movie looks absolutely gorgeous and, due to the score provided by Cliff Martinez, sounds gorgeous too. The lack of a real plot or story to the movie, especially when the central characters are so wonderfully brought to life by the main actors (including the wonderful Keanu Reeves in a what I thought was a fairly brave role for him), is not usually anywhere near a problem with me and I often prefer those kinds of films which don’t have a real tale to tell... but this one, for some reason, did feel quite empty and I found that, although I was certainly entertained by the look and feel of the movie, I was less than happy with the resonance of the final product, haunting as it is, in some respects. It’s not one I’d particularly recommend to people and I’d have to say the outrage it’s provoked in some quarters seems bizarrely out of kilter with the ‘nothing new here, move along’ quality of this film and just forces me to conclude that the people who express such notions are sorely lacking in their appreciation of cinematic history. At the end of the day, there’s nothing really surprising or eye opening about The Neon Demon and I would only go to see this one if you are an ardent fan of style over substance.