***/**** Image D+ Sound D+
starring Connie Nielsen, Charles Berling, Chloë Sevigny, Gina Gershon
written and directed by Olivier Assayas
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Right now, I think I like Olivier Assayas's demonlover. I think. I don't always feel this way: after a couple of screenings and a lot of pondering, I have to say that this singularly dense and elliptical movie has a lot of things going against it. Like its lead, it's cold and austere to a fault, viewing its techno-financial milieu from a safe distance and attributing to it a number of traits that simply don't add up. But in the cold light of day, the film connects the dots about the business of cultural production that are normally hidden from view. Assayas may be grasping at straws in a number of instances, but his general framework is sound, and as he speaks of the disconnect of people from the industries that shape them, I'm inclined to look past demonlover's weaknesses. Right now, at least.
Here, after two viewings, is what I think the film is about. Diane de Monx (Connie Nielsen), the frosty, ruthless assistant to the head of the giant Volf conglomerate, is a double agent for the beleaguered Mangatronics corporation. As the film opens, she's making a Mickey Finn out of a colleague's Evian in order to find out what's sealed in her briefcase–a turn of events that leads Papa Volf to give Diane her victim's position and send her to close the deal that Mangatronics was trying to avert. The nature of the deal? Only the distribution rights to a pornographic anime company that would shut off the tap to Mangatronics' product and give winning distributor Demonlover a virtual stranglehold on the market. Problems arise when it becomes rumoured that a notorious bondage-and-torture site called hellfireclub.com is connected to Demonlover, especially when Diane finds the digital paper trail leading in its direction.
It sounds simple, but it doesn't play that way at all. Assayas isn't interested in telling you the tale of Mangatronics vs. Demonlover, because that would mean pitting a "good" company against an evil one when really it's all a battle for the minds of people the well-monied participants will never meet. His film is sort of Wall Street with every role played by Gordon Gekko and no hope of a Charlie Sheen to slay the dragon. One watches the endless board meetings with blasé businesspeople talking about the destruction of companies and domination of market share, and one realizes that this is who controls our images, people who don't give a damn what they end up saying. And one watches the constant backstabbing between Diane and her successor and Diane and her assistant Elise (Chloë Sevigny), and one observes Diane's inability to connect with interested co-worker Herve (Charles Berling), only to see the disaster that total identification with the business system can do.
Assayas doesn't quite have his finger on the pulse of this shambling monster. Much has been made of demonlover's similarities to Videodrome, especially as it disappears into half-reality at its finish, but it's no comparison: where Cronenberg was on the vanguard of the VHS and cable era (and could speak from experience), Assayas comes late to the new media party and has to improvise. Thus he relies on a black-and-white monochrome that telegraphs the "cold," "unfeeling" nature of the media business world, doing his best to treat his subjects like something he doesn't want to step in; while I appreciate that these aren't the nicest people in the world, his cliché ire takes down all those who are yoked to them whether they know their connection or not. One has to take exception to Assayas's refusal to see his own films as part of the market's matrix, as if he can separate himself from the environment that implicates us. Nevertheless, he's onto something; however much I object to his elitist sneer, I can also understand his intellectual's rage at the cultural calcification created by the similarly aloof robber barons. Maybe I'll think something else tomorrow, but that's my opinion today.
THE DVD
Lions Gate's Canadian DVD release of demonlover is a minor travesty. The least of the non-anamorphic 2.30:1 transfer's problems is that it's quite grainy: the monochromatic colour scheme suffers from a slight greenish tinge to the blacks, which, like the ghosting that also plagues the image, is an unmistakable artifact of a PAL-to-NTSC conversion. (PAL-related issues also account for the discrepancy between the disc's reported running time of 122 minutes and its actual running time of 115 minutes.) Meanwhile, given the film's aural subtlety (as well as its Sonic Youth score), one regrets the distributor's decision to crush the readily available 5.1 stems into a simple Dolby stereo presentation. (The film played most moviehouses in six-track digital.) Adding further insult to injury, the English subtitles are burned-in, and there are no extras of any kind. Alas, we didn't have the American release on hand for comparison; at presstime, none of the major sites had covered it.
115 minutes; PG; 2.30:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 2.0 (Stereo); DVD-9; Region One; Lions Gate
