Dir: Nicolas Winding Refn (18, 117 mins)
[wpdevart_youtube]cipOTUO0CmU[/wpdevart_youtube]
It’s style over substance once more for Drive and Only God Forgives director Nicolas Winding Refn in this horror set in the fashion industry. It’s a well-worn tale of the young impressionable teenager Jesse (an excellent Elle Fanning) going out to Los Angeles to become famous, a supermodel in fact. Sending horror chic photos to fashionistas, she is soon picked up by Christina Hendricks’ parasitic agent and plunges into a hedonistic and sinister world, rubbing shoulders with dead eyed models and clingy makeup artist Jena Malone, who introduces her to creepy dungeon parties. Fanning’s beauty soon brings her rewards, much to the envy of others, and the attention of dodgy blokes like Keanu Reeves, making a convincing slimeball, and Alessandro Nivola’s fashion guru. It veers widely in tone; threat and menace abound but never pay out. It looks ravishing but remains deeply uninvolving despite Fanning’s best efforts. Director Refn may be a master of style, but since Drive content has eluded him. Opens July 8
words KEIRON SELF