Her Private Hell
Self-indulgence has a new name and his name is Nicolas Winding Refn.
Spaced out big time: Sophie Thatcher
Image courtesy of Mubi
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
There’s nobody quite like Nicolas Winding Refn. He’s one of the few directors whose distinctive style immediately sets him apart – where he delivers stories imbued with stifling atmosphere, long and slow tracking shots, harsh red lighting and sudden and uncomfortable violence. Following his trio of Pusher films in his native Denmark, NWF broke onto the international scene with his masterpiece, Drive (2011), starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, and he never really recovered. His next two films divided critics big time, eliciting both cheers and boos at their Cannes screenings and so he scuttled into the safer embrace of television for Too Old to Die Young (2019) and Copenhagen Cowboy (2023), having passed on an offer to direct James Bond in Spectre.
Her Private Hell is his first feature film in ten years – and it could well be his last. While displaying his signature traits of stylised camera movement and sudden bursts of violence, it is an oddity seemingly designed to baffle. Set in a dystopian future (yawn) and filmed on a studio stage in Copenhagen, it is filled with characters who speak in slow monotones. The indoor sets are impressively Kubrickian, each and everyone like the interior of a futuristic hotel, while the exteriors feel as if they’re also shot in a studio, with blankets of mist concealing the camera cables. Our heroine, Elle (after Elle Fanning, the star of NWF’s last film, The Neon Demon), lives in a high-rise penthouse overlooking various skyscrapers enshrouded in cloud. She shares space with her Wasian stepmother Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), who is an aloof figure to whom Elle is both attracted to and wary of. There’s a new girl in town, the impressionable and sensual Hunter (Kristine Froseth) and a couple of kooky Japanese dressmakers recalling the replicants in Blade Runner 2049.
It’s not entirely clear where we are in time or geography, or in tone. One minute the girls are discussing the essence of female psyche, the next Elle is piloting a spaceship which she crash-lands on a crystal planet. Meanwhile, Charles Melton pops up as Private K, narrating his own story in a Chandleresque voice-over while smoking countless cigarettes. In fact, there are lots of cigarettes, but no Internet, so Heaven knows where we are.
At times Her Private Hell feels like a movie set to a film soundtrack, so prominent is Pino Donaggio’s sweeping orchestral score. At others, one senses it is a parody of schlocky 1950s sci-fi or 1940s hard-boiled pulp fiction. There are numerous plodding set-pieces in which our protagonists are cast as onlookers waiting, perhaps, for their cue to act. Melton wafts through the proceedings as an irregular accessory, flaunting his diamantine features like a catwalk model who has lost his way. There are fight scenes aplenty, but even these feel like they have escaped from a Tarantino movie just as the latter had let the air out of them. Perhaps Winding Refn’s intent was to dress up cheesy cinema with his inimitable cinematic panache. However, he really fails to mask the odour.
Cast: Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Havana Rose Liu, Kristine Froseth, Shioli Kutsuna, Aoi Yamada, Dougray Scott, Diego Calva, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Parker Sawyers.
Dir Nicolas Winding Refn, Pro Nicolas Winding Refn, Ex Pro Lene Børglum, Christina Erritzøe, Takuma Takasaki and Kimberly Willming, Screenplay Nicolas Winding Refn and Esti Giordani, from a story by Nicolas Winding Refn, Ph Magnus Nordenhof Jønck, Pro Des Gitte Malling, Ed Matthew Newman, Music Pino Donaggio, Costumes Jane Marshall Whittaker, Sound Kristian Selin Eidnes Andersen.
Neon/byNWR Originals-Mubi.
109 mins. Denmark/USA. 2026. US Rel: 24 July 2026. UK Rel: 25 September 2026. Cert. 18.
