What Have They Done to Your Daughters?: Refn Returns with Vacuous Vengeance
After disappearing into television for the past decade, Nicolas Winding Refn once again rears into the cinema with Her Private Hell, which unfortunately is an insufferable, nonsensical exercise suggesting his narrative coffers remain empty. While it would appear Refn desires to channel a Lynchian nightmare subconscious realm, the extravagant neon-lit demimonde from DP Magnus Nordenhof Jønck aligns more with a Tron-inspired music video mentality, exploring ambiguous themes about eroding kinship roles between fathers and their daughters who are routinely devoured by an exploitative entertainment industry informed by a misogynistic culture. However, such complex subtexts are a bit of a stretch, evaporating beneath the exasperatingly stilted dialogue, pregnant with enough pauses to make watching it feel like the whole affair was on the verge of overdosing from a Schedule IV controlled substance.
Elle (Sophie Thatcher) arrives at a monolithic high-rise in a sinister metropolis consumed by a troubling mist where she is to begin work on a new film project by her father, the infamous Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott). She’s greeted in the desolate lobby by her co-star, Hunter (Kristine Froseth), an ingenue who seems determined to usurp Elle’s spot as the ‘next best thing.’ The two women are forced to share a room, as, inexplicably, there’s an issue with Hunter’s reservation. The two women then meet Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), Elle’s ex-best friend who is now her step-mother, another woman she’s forced into competition for relevance with. However, Johnny Thunders has recused himself from the film production, desiring Dominique and Elle (quite literally) ‘bury the hatchet’ in his absence. Meanwhile, the women eventually cross paths with an American soldier named Private K (Charles Melton), searching for his long lost daughter in the miasmic underbelly of the Japanese neighborhood she disappeared into some time ago. Johnny Thunders relays a contemporary urban legend about a serial killer called the Leather Man, a vicious entity who slaughters every nubile young woman in his wake as a means to satisfy his own distorted quest to similarly relocate a missing daughter.
If Xanadu (1980) were retrofitted as a giallo, it might feel something like Her Private Hell, a comparison which also makes it seem there’s some fun to be had. There is not. Sophie Thatcher, Havana Rose Liu, and Kristine Froseth have the unhappy task of delivering stupendously stupid dialogue whilst engaged in some kind of All About Eve (1950) struggle for prominence. While this trio feels like the end result of whatever Beatrice Dalle was trying to direct in Gaspar Noe’s Lux Aeterna (2019), we’re also forced to experience the sci-fi schlock they’re filming, which seems to be mainlining the titillating essence of Barbarella (1968) or Curtis Harrington’s Queen of Blood (1966) but in the vein of someone like Russ Meyer. What seems to be missing from Refn’s lexicon is camp awareness, and what Her Private Hell could have actually benefited from would be a queer lens as this seems material ripe for someone like Bertrand Mandico reconstituting cult classic leather fetish properties akin to The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968). The ‘fashions’ donned by the women are perhaps purposefully garish (especially a final outfit donned by Forseth), but it’s unclear what Refn’s actual intentions are. Is Thatcher’s hair supposed to transform from a Gina Lollabrigida updo into the pelt of a dead woodland creature or is it so she can more easily segue into a Betty Blue (1986) bout of hysterics?
Lodged in here is the story of a serial killer known as the Leather Man, who is definitely a creepy facet on the narrative outskirts, though designed like a Siegried & Roy take on S&M with glowing pink eyes and diamond-encrusted leather gloves. Dougray Scott, obnoxiously referred to as Daddy enough to make one wonder if this is all supposed to represent the agonized vista of Refn’s own subconscious guilt pertaining to personal accountability, introduces the specter of a rampant killer and this confusedly bleeds over into the parallel origin of Charles Melton as an American GI in Japan (though he’s acting behaving like some kind of unmoored or displaced ronin) searching for his own disappeared daughter like George C. Scott in Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (1979). Metaphorically, it would appear Melton’s Private K (like a Kafka character on the verge of transmutation) has been trapped in some level of hell glorified by questionable elements of ‘Orientalism.’ Private K might be turning into the Leather Man before our very eyes, but he might just as easily be heading off to local Eagle to compete in a gay leather contest.
Diego Calvo also pops up as a sexually ambiguous plaything whose attentions further disrupt the women’s relationships, and, at long last, the predictable encounter between the three narrative strands collide. The beautiful tedium is somewhat enhanced by a luscious score from Pino Donaggio, but there are shades of Vivaldi which suggest it would be more appropriate had it accompanied some kind of soapy Douglas Sirk melodrama (Magnificent Obsession, indeed). Refn’s latest, much like 2016’s The Neon Demon (read review), is film dependent upon the exploration of fetishistic interests, and on paper suggests the possibility of decadence inherent in something like a Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani film, who have long been experts at nonsensical narratives heightened by dazzling pastiche. If he’s going to continually skirt on the surface of exploring his favored fetishes, he needs (as begged by Janet Jackson in “Feedback”) more appealing novelties to feed them, as this display is clearly unsatisfying. To crib from Sylvia Plath, “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”
Reviewed on May 19th at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival (79th edition) – Out of Competition. 109 Mins
★½/☆☆☆☆☆