Her Private Hell
What even is post-narrative cinema? And what is Nicolas Winding Refn up to in Her Private Hell, an example, so he says, of a type of cinematic production taking its cues from social media? I will try to run through the plot, though it might be easier to say what Refn left out rather than what he put in. He doomscrolls his way through a film packed with incident and influence, references and oblique takes on genre. This starts with Sophie Thatcher’s Elle stalking her way down a film-noir road, a 1940s femme fatale accompanied by smoke and Wagnerian brass. She’s playing an actress en route to meeting a fellow thespian, Hunter (Kristine … Read more
