With Cannes officially up and running, we're starting to get our first reviews in for some of the biggest releases of the year. Yesterday saw the generally favorable first reactions to Woody Allen's Cafe Society, the umpteenth sophisticated comedy from the Annie Hall helmer, and today, we're getting first word on what director Jodie Foster, along with co-stars George Clooney and Julia Roberts, have in store for us with Money Monster.
For many, however, the big title on the list is Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon, which stars Elle Fanning as a budding model who enters a glitzy, grotesque world of fame, sex, drugs, and corrupt aesthetics, with help from the likes of Jena Malone, Christina Hendricks, Bella Heathcote, and Alessandro Nivola. We've seen a good helping of marketing from this film already, and now we have a new international trailer for the film, which includes mostly familiar images of mirrors, blood, and crazy wardrobes. You can check out the new trailer below.
It's worth noting that Refn brought Only God Forgives to Cannes and that it was, with little exception, savaged by critics at the festival; reports poured in on the wave of boos that accompanied the film's end credits. I wasn't crazy about that film but it was hardly anything less than a mediocrity, and had a few genuinely enthralling sequences in between the repressed brooding and face-smashing. My hopes are much higher for this film, which would seemingly more directly confront Refn's newfound relationship with fame and money, as well as his own glamorous kind of style. If nothing else, when the title bows at Cannes next week, the film should provide a healthy dollop of advanced Argento-worship.
Here's the new international trailer for The Neon Demon:
Here's the official synopsis for Refn's latest:
When aspiring model Jesse moves to Los Angeles, her youth and vitality are devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will take any means necessary to get what she has.
