To try and describe the plot of “Her Private Hell” is no easy feat but I will do my best at giving a brief synopsis. The film begins with Elle arriving at a mysterious hotel where she is to start shooting a new sci-fi movie based on a popular comic book entitled “The Candyfloss Girls”. The film is being financed by her father, Johnny Thunders, whom Elle has a strained relationship with since he married her former best friend and lover, Dominique. To increase the awkwardness in the shoot, Dominique is to be one of Elle's co-stars in the film, with Johnny Thunders hoping this will bring the girls closer together once more. However, before they can get too far into shooting, the girls (which also includes Hunter, an influencer also cast in a key role in the film) become aware of a vicious serial killer, dubbed “The Leatherman”, who is going around killing young women who happen to cross his path. The urban legend of The Leatherman is that he was once a distraught father who, after his daughter went missing, he searched his whole lifetime looking for her, to the point that he forgot what he was searching for. Only when a mysterious mist descends upon the city, does he remember, and then nothing will stop in his way to find his little girl, with him destroying anyone who reminds him of what he has lost. (Still with me?). A second story line also runs parallel to the first, set in post war Japan where Private K is also searching the streets for his own missing (feared dead) daughter, appearing to lose his humanity in the process. Eventually, these two story lines begin to merge into one.
I am quite a big fan of Nicolas Winding Refn's films, and have seen every one he has made to date. That is not to say that I love them all, but I do love when a filmmaker has a distinct style that is easy to identify in seconds as to who the author of the film was. Refn has this in spades, he makes films that only could have been made by him. What I am trying to get across here is that I knew what I was getting into before I watched “Her Private Hell” and yet I found the film still, at times, confounded me. For mine, Refn's absolute masterpiece is his 2011 film “Drive”, but since that film he has descending down a rabbit hole of his own making where his movies seem to prioritise the visuals and atmosphere, rather than a clear narrative for the audience to grasp. Since then, I also think has had mixed success, as I found “Only God Forgives”, whilst beautifully made and stunningly shot, to be a bit of a disaster and an absolute slog to get through, whilst “The Neon Demon” fared more positively, the surreal elements within the film did it no favours. Similarly, his two television series were made in the same style, with “Too Old to Die Young” at least attempting to tell a story, whereas “Copenhagen Cowboy” I found very hard to truly understand what was going on. Again, both series look magnificent. When the trailer for “Her Private Hell” was finally released, I will admit that I feared that we were headed down a similar path, as it looked exactly like a Nicolas Winding Refn film, but it also came across as vapid and a little silly. To be honest, I was a little worried about the finished product.
Despite it being hyper (over?) stylised, and set in a dream-like make believe world, I was actually with “Her Private Hell” for at least a good hour, before I felt the film totally fell apart. During this initial hour, whilst very odd and surreal, it still felt plotted, that there was some internal logic within the film and its rules that made some kind of sense. It felt like Refn was deliberately leading us somewhere even if the journey to this destination was more than a little unusual. By the time the second half of the film began, I no longer felt this. The control I thought Refn had over his story was no longer there, and instead was replaced with scenes that appeared to exist only because they looked “cool” rather than there being any connective tissue from previous scenes beforehand. I believe I know the reason for this, which became obvious through interviews I read with Refn about the film after I saw it, but I will get to that in a moment. Personally, I love a bit of mystery in my movies, and I love puzzle films where you have to put the pieces together to understand what is truly going on (I am a massive David Lynch fan, after all!). The first hour of “Her Private Hell” had something of a fairy tale quality to it, and whilst a little convoluted and confusing, I thought the cautionary tale of “The Leatherman” was done well too. I believe its Johnny Thunders that states the moral of story which is to “watch over your daughters, or the Leatherman will!” Refn (like myself) is married with two daughters himself, so I thought this was a nice little personal detail included in his film. The way “Her Private Hell” is edited, we know there is some connection between Elle and Private K, even if it is just Elle dreaming the Private K section of the film, but by the time these two story lines do connect to turn into a single narrative, I have no idea how or why it happens. By this stage, the film makes no sense at all.
As I predicted right from the top, “Her Private Hell” looks amazing, and Refn and his cinematographer Magnus Nordenhof Jonck have created some truly stunning images within the film, BUT I also have to say that after awhile all of the constant neon and flashing lights does end up becoming repetitive to the point that it starts to lose its power. I hate to say it but it is starting to appear that Refn is actually becoming a parody of himself, as it appears that this is the only way he knows how to shoot a film these days. Again, I love his use of colour (I am always amazed by this because Refn is colour blind) and the fact that he is one filmmaker who is not afraid of using bright colours to tell his stories, but too much of a good thing is still too much, and ends up having a negative effect on the audience. In terms of acting, I really felt for the actors who star in “Her Private Hell” because they are given almost nothing to work with the film. This is because they are essentially playing ciphers rather than real characters. Everyone moves and emotes in a slow dreamy state, but every emotion feels forced, stylised and fake. I do not blame the actors at all here for their uninspiring performances, as this is obviously how they have been directed to act from Refn, and the film's story line also does them no favours. There is even a truly embarrassing moment when three of the girls communicate like wolf pups, barking, which makes me shudder each time I think about it. Sadly the two leads, Sophie Thatcher as Elle and Charles Melton as Private K, are given no opportunity to impress in this film. There are only two performances in the film that are worth mentioning, and that is Havana Rose Liu who gives her all and tries her hardest to make Dominique into a real three dimensional character, and Hidetoshi Nishijima who is excellent playing a Japanese cop, but is totally wasted because his scenes feel completely divorced from the rest of the film.
The greatest asset of “Her Private Hell” though has to be Pino Donaggio's excellent score which, in my opinion, does most of the heavy lifting in creating the film's atmosphere and fairy tale wonder. As I am a massive Brian de Palma fan, it goes without saying that I am also a big Donaggio fan and think that the music he made for de Palma is some of my favourite in cinema history (I love, love, love his score for “Dressed to Kill”!). His score for “Her Private Hell” ranks right up there with his best, and unusually, “Her Private Hell” is wall to wall with his music. I cannot think of a moment in the film bereft of Donaggio's score, but again the music is outstanding, and it seems that this great composer has been really inspired by the visuals in Refn's film.
Ok, so where did it all go wrong for “Her Private Hell”? Unusual for film productions, Refn shot the film chronologically, and I think this was only possible due to the small cast and very limited locations. In fact, at times the film does have a “cheap” feel to it, in that I am sure that the production had a very modest budget at best. That in itself is not the problem, as having limited resources often breeds creativity as filmmakers have to come up with interesting ways to shoot scenes to make them look more expensive. The issue is the fact that because it was shot chronologically, Refn has been able to change his script as he went along, which he has admitted to in interviews regarding this film. The big reveal was that he totally changed the original ending, and not only that, he kept the new ending a secret from both his cast and crew to keep them “intrigued”. The problem with this is no one knows what they are working towards anymore, meaning depths of performances may no longer make sense, as well as building up of emotions for later scenes that now do not exist. Personally, I am sure [potential spoilers incoming.....] that the original plan was that Private K was meant to morph into the Leatherman; we were essentially being told his origin in the parallel story to Elle's. I also think that originally either Elle or all the girls were meant to be victims of the Leatherman by the film's end. To be honest, this makes perfect sense of everything that takes place in that opening hour, and would've made “Her Private Hell” so much more satisfying than the end result (even if it would've been a little simplistic). However Refn has stated that he saw a different and more obvious connection between Elle and Private K than he originally intended when he began shooting, and that is why he changed it, but it no longer makes any sense because the second half of the film is not connected to the first. We now have Private K appearing in Elle's timeline fighting against the Leatherman, making the film totally fall apart (not to mention Refn goes back to his obsession with hands like in “Only God Forgives”, where the Leatherman can only be killed if you remove said hands.......um, what?) [end of spoilers].
Overall, whilst I did have a good time with the opening half of “Her Private Hell”, when I thought it was leading to planned concrete destination, by the time the second half began the film had totally fallen apart and wasted all the goodwill it had earned. I will admit that it has been stunningly photographed like all of Refn's films, but it is getting to the point when Refn is becoming a parody of himself, and I think he really needs to start focusing less on his visuals and more on telling an excellent story again. He is very capable of doing this, as his early filmography up to and including “Drive” shows, but with the style he is currently employing, he is wasting the acting talents of his cast by giving them little to do, to the point that I felt embarrassed for them during some scenes of “Her Private Hell”. It isn't an out and out disaster like I thought “Only God Forgives” was, it does have a stunning score from Pino Donaggio that is worth hearing, but it is a massive disappointment from a great director who has been missing from our screens for the past decade.
2.5 Stars.
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