Demonlover (2003)

the audience applauded

Absolutely the worst movie.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Demonlover: 4 out of 10: Wow what an overlong train wreck of a movie. Before I begin to scratch the surface of the ineptitude of this film let me explain the few things Demonlover does right.Demonlover does some things very well. It has individual scenes that work on their own either as erotic vignettes; (Chloe Sevigny playing videogames in the nude , an Asian girl seducing a French man at a club after his lover leaves.) or plot actions (dosing a bottled water with Halcion) before the film ventures down the rabbit hole twenty odd minutes in.The general plot of Demonlover is a French conglomerate is looking to buy an adult anime company. Because of this, a rival Adult anime distributor has sent a corporate spy to put a kibosh on the proceedings. That is the story, there is some silliness about a for-pay torture and bondage site but ther story in a nutshell is an Anime buyout scheme.So how can a thriller dealing with bondage and Hentai and starring Chloë Sevigny, Gina Gershon, and the hot redhead from Devil’s Advocate, Connie Nielsen, possibly go wrong? Well for one thing, there are cloistered nuns that know more about marketing animated porn online than writer/director Olivier Assayas does. I often complain about movies where the writers and director have clearly never worked in an office (13 Going on 30 for example) but this is over the top. The French, as an example, are worried about a secret website that makes lots of money. If the website makes lots of money… wait for it… it probably is not a secret. Moreover, I am sure that cornering the online Hentai traffic is an unattainable goal. After all, how hard is it to draw new tentacle porn? In addition, I doubt many corporate spies scale the sides of buildings or poison colleagues. Moreover, with the silliest script this side of The Core you cannot depend on the ever confusing and contrived plot.I know I praised the sex scenes above but with this cast, I was expecting more, a lot more. Also I often did not know where the movie was taking place. (are they in Tokyo or France is a popular game you can play.) Then there is the car chase, at the end, that looks like an outtake from Vanishing Point. (As Tom Servo would have said “Meanwhile in another decade”)The film is overlong, very confusing, somewhat boring and the characters IQ’s seem to drop every scene. After the fifteenth fade to black transition, I actually screamed “end already” at the screen.In reality, this seems to be a badly done remake of Videodrome. Olivier Assayas is clearly no David Cronenberg. He cannot even tell a simple story in a believable and entertaining manner. Or take advantage of three of the hottest actresses in the business.

Fans of the capitalist systems will naturally be opposed to the message in this film. Its is just an exercise in corporate power struggles and greed.Connie Nielsen (Gladiator, One Hour Photo) is a conniving, soulless corporate lawyer that is clawing her way to the top while spying for a rival company. She is negotiating a deal for a Japanese company that make anime porn and needs the deal to move into 3D.She steps over a rival, who's friend, Chloë Sevigny (Boys Don't Cry, Zodiac), stops playing her video games in the nude long enough to respond and ends up in the driver's seat. It's all about power and control and any means is fair game to get there.Gina Gershon (Bound) pops into the mix as a representative from an American company (Demonlover) that wants the same company. She exposes the hidden torture porn website that they own. Unfortunately, she doesn't last long in this game of corporate intrigue.Even a simple act of having sex becomes a power game as it turns from sex to rape to - well, I won't give that away.The ending ties it all up and show just what is driving all this mess, but unfortunately it just sort of pops into view and was not really set up properly. If done right, it would have made a good film into a great film.

I hung in there and watched this movie beginning to end ( 120 minutes ). And it was hard to do. But I love Chloë Sevigny as an actress and she alone kept me watching. Following the storyline was very difficult. Lots of amoral business folk and that sort of thing. But the film did have good visuals and a fast pace, with scenes in Tokoyo, Paris and even Mexico. French, English and Japanese were spoken back and forth thru the film, making it even more confusing. More disturbing is that we may be at a point where torture on the internet may capture lucrative business. Where does depravity end? Will people do anything for money?To summarize, given another chance, I wished I would have chosen a different movie to watch today.

Demonlover is an intricate, absorbing and claustrophobically dramatic movie about corporate espionage, loyalty and betrayal. It tackles some interesting and relevant subject matter, and establishes characters and situations too complex to make clear sense out of. I've read some of the better interpretations by other users (for instance the thoughtful comment by the user panspermia, which however I don't agree with), and the events in this movie can certainly be perceived in a number of different ways. It's very true that there is a dominance/submission theme running through it, but the whys and wherefores of the events and reactions unfortunately tend to be too vague. I have my own interpretation of what went on (which is too lengthy to go into in detail), but my impression suffers a great deal from unclear descriptions of the companies and who are with which company. I think my interpretation works pretty well, though, even if there may be a couple of less than literal layers of the story that I'm probably missing (such as exactly what the DNA string at the end means, if anything). I'm looking forward to sometime seeing the movie a second time, and noticing more details. Disturbing as the movie is, however, I think it will be a while before I'll want to watch it again.But all in all it's an interesting and thought-provoking little movie, with great production values and good actors.7 out of 10.