Cheap Demonlover (Unrated Director's Cut) (DVD) (Connie Nielsen, Chloë Sevigny, Gina Gershon) (Olivier Assayas) Price

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Customer Reviews of Demonlover (Unrated Director's Cut)

I kept waiting and still waiting. Waiting for this movie to make sense. It don't, it never will. Some might think the movie is artsy even engrossing. It is artsy in a way but it's more gross than engrossing. This is obviously a case of one man's treasure is another man's junk. I'm the latter.

The story, if you want to call it that, is ostensibly about the perversive influence of pornography on the internet and an unholy competition, no make that battle, between two giants of internet pornography to land a contract/merger? with a Japanese animation company. I didn't see the connection either but apparently the pornographers were interested in the new virtual realty aspect of animation for their purposes. Connie Nielsen plays the part of Diane de Monx, an up and coming executive who is duplicitous in that she is involved in corporate espionage for a competing company, while having the protection of the company CEO

CONCLUSION

I'm only writing this review because several reviewers gave it a four star rating. This is highly inflated. I'm giving it two stars but only because it did hold my interest til the end.(I kept trying to make sense of it). Oh, one more thing. Did I mentioned that the movie is in French and some Japanese so you get to read enlish subtitles throughout the movie.

Cybercinema for pensive viewers
Forget about trying to follow the plot. It's useless; yet, in a strange way you know exactly what's going on. This isn't about one thing, (no Hollywood connect-the-dots-type of storytelling). The film is about the things that people in high places do for money and power, which is basically anything and everything: from murder to porn to...you name it! The internet-trash-billionaire industry is a backdrop of sorts to explore just how vile and corrupt people can be. These jet setters have one god: money; and they'll kill, cheat and destroy to get it, even if they never "physically" see it.

The film could well be an expose of 21st century corporate corruption that has made the headlines so often recently just about everyhwere on the planet.

The objective of the game is: move out of the way, I want the power, the money, the glory. Pretty, greedy people. These players have sold their souls to the demon of Mammon, the oldest transaction in the book, but toyed here with expensive computerized gadgets.

There's more to this movie than meets the eye. This seems to be a new trend in the cinema: telling one story on the surface, while the "real" movie plays just beneath it. Impatient viewers, forget this one. But if you like an involving, slick, very entertaining flick, try this little masterpiece of cyber-malice.
A most enlightening piece of work. This is the sort of movie that throws the so-called "glamour" of corrupt "high rollers" right into delete, where it belongs.

Connie Nielsen has never been better. This is her first, true star-making vehicle.

Brave New World
This highly sensual film uses the slick Emma Peel-in-a-skintight-jumpsuit-meets-the-Matrix veneer that most people associate with high stakes business acquisitions, fast cars and corporate espionage . . . and for the first half of the movie, that is exactly what is delivered---intrigue on a multi-national and multi-million dollar level showcased in exquisitely neoned Japan, overseas business class flights and minimalist board rooms. Diane, played to perfection by Connie Nielsen is the Emma Peel of a French investment house intent on acquiring a monopoly on Japanese animated pornography. Perfectly dressed and coiffed, she epitomizes the business woman who has it all: brains, savvy and a polished understated unfluctuating demeanor that make her hard to read and hard to penetrate. We watch her intriguingly non-react as she puts a woman colleague out of commission, discovers that someone else knows what she has done, make deals with an Internet pornography competitor on the metro and all around suppresses her intrinsic sense of womanhood as she stands by and watches----no smiles apologetically----a piece of Japanese anime explicit with enough sexist content to render anyone with the vaguest sense of feminism a bad case of the hives. The fimmaker's vision of people in general in a world consumed by a consumerism so out of control that it feeds off its own negative energy, is blurred; the defining line between men and women eroded by a viciously amoral competition.

Then comes the second half of the movie where so many things seem to happen for no real reason at all. Yes, we can see the varying factions surface as the desire to win control becomes more sharply delineated---but instead of making it all work somehow, where the message, although hidden, can be revealed by some careful consideration, the series of images seem to just run amok. At the end, Diane has reformatted herself a la Laura Croft to deliver the consumer with that which he desires. The message: I am unsure---perhaps intense interplay produces human anime with little sensibility other than winning the competition and delivering product. An unhumbled Diane glares out at the world from a computer screen---is she beaten---no---she has just metamorphed.

This film is not recommended to everyone. Those looking for a fluid plot will not be satisfied with its second half. However, if you enjoy the sense of the real world being shrunk even smaller in a global marketplace where nationality and language are no longer real issues and the Internet serves as a conduit for salving any desire, you may enjoy this director's vision.