Starring: Connie Nielsen, Gina Gershon, Chloë Sevigny

Directed By: Olivier Assayas

A scene from Demonlover

Let me not divulge the story of this film because that might cause many of you to loose track of what the director is trying to show. The film jumps in and out of reality without even sounding as preachy as the popular Matrix series. It begin is a plane where the screens are filled with images of violence and torture. The main protagonist is writing something down but is on another track of thought. She seems to be more than just an employee but a striking creature of war. Diane is played by the beautiful Connie Nielsen who seems to love the role a lot.

On the surface each of the characters looks very normal and don’t seems to have any sort of connection to each other. But when the plot thickens we see loads of layers peeling of with no morality to call for. This is something that the critic Roger Ebert was not happy with. But the film is totally centered on amoral people who seem to be mostly women. The webs of deceit keep flowing on to one another till there is a total breach of reality. The director controls most of what happens with some interesting camera angles. They reveal a lot of what these people seem to think of the world and of each other. Alivier doesn’t seem to have a penchant for any of the character. But he wants the thoughts to be observed on screen.

It is by several convulsive twists that the story sort of comes to light. But by then it is a little too late you have missed a lot before that. The film though slow placed can begin to work on your mind and might make you loose focus on what has actually happened. Lots of the ideas are happening in the background something reminiscent of Bresson’s work like L’Argent and many others. But the film lifts a little too much from the David Cronenberg classics. It is not that the film is a copy or something but many of the ideas might have been imagined but never shown in such visual splendor. The themes of sadomasochism and interactive torture are used as a means for the viewer to loose track of what is really going on.

The fact that Olivier took up such themes is not something that needs to praised. But it is the way he used it to create something that seems to be a whole lot but actually a surface interpretations. Even the inner workings of the porn industry are not something that is of relevance in this movie. That is one of the interesting points of the film nothing is really highlighted, its upto you to take what you want.

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