Probably my most anticipated film heading into Fantasia this year was Nicolas Winding Refn’s return to the big screen after nearly a decade with Her Private Hell. Opening the festival with Refn in attendance—accepting a receiving a Career Cheval Noir —the screening quickly made one thing abundantly clear: not only is Refn back, he’s bigger, bolder, and stranger than ever.
With Her Private Hell, Refn finally cuts the last tether to reality. Set in a neon-drenched futuristic metropolis that feels less like science fiction than a Refn fairy tale, the film exists entirely on its own dream logic. Sophie Thatcher stars as Elle, a nepo-baby filmmaker preparing an aspiring actress, Hunter (Kristine Froseth), for a part in her Barbarella-inspired sci-fi epic. Hunter moves in with Elle and her best friend turned wicked stepmother, Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), while Elle’s enigmatic father, Johnny Thunder, is away on business. As the trio settle into their bizarre domestic arrangement, whispers spread about the Leatherman—a leather-clad nightmare seemingly ripped straight from Refn’s id—who emerges from the fog searching for his missing daughter, brutally ripping through the women unfortunate enough to cross his path.
Thatcher continues her ascent as one of the most compelling actresses working today and here proves to be Refn’s latest perfect muse. She possesses the ethereal beauty that the auteurs’ camera has always been fascinated by, but balances it with an effortless cool and flashes of toxic masculinity that make her utterly magnetic. Like The Neon Demon, she’s surrounded by a stellar ensemble of women fully committed to the film’s heightened reality. Perhaps most surprising is just how funny the film can be at time, as Refn infuses this story with Telenovela levels of melodrama and an absurd levity that make its darker turns even more unsettling.
Refn is absolutely swinging for the fences here, constructing one of the richest cinematic worlds of his career. The city feels suspended somewhere between dream and nightmare, with deliberately artificial sets that proudly announce themselves as theatrical constructs. Rather than undermining the illusion, that stage-like quality only deepens the film’s surreal, operatic atmosphere. Complementing those striking visuals is a gorgeous score from legendary composer Pino Donaggio (Body Double), whom Refn coaxed out of retirement for the project. Eschewing the synth-driven soundscapes that have become synonymous with his work, Donaggio delivers sweeping orchestral compositions that amplify both the film’s operative melodrama and its gothic horror, pushing it even further into the realm of dark fantasy.
Narratively, Her Private Hell is an intoxicating collision of fairy tale, Greek tragedy, and sadomasochistic fever dream. It also feels like a fascinating companion piece or spiritual sequel to Only God Forgives. Where that film explored the warped psychology of a son consumed by his relationship with his mother, Her Private Hell finds Refn—now a father himself—interrogating a very different obsession: the terrifying realization that every father eventually has to confront – the fact that the world is full of men exactly like himself. That anxiety is complicated further by the revelation that Elle’s father has married her former best friend, blurring the boundaries between parental love, desire, possession, and identity. Running parallel to Elle’s story is that of Kay, a Japanese soldier searching for the daughter taken from him after World War II, another fractured father whose grief echoes across generations.
All of these threads converge into a hypnotic, deeply personal meditation on fatherhood filtered through Refn’s unmistakable aesthetic: fetishistic leather, clouds of electric blue and hot pink smoke, operatic melodrama, and bursts of shocking violence. Never one to play it safe, Refn continues pushing both his audience and himself into increasingly provocative territory. There were more than a few walkouts during my screening, but for those willing to surrender to its surreal wavelength, Her Private Hell is one of Refn’s most uncompromising—and arguably most fascinating—works to date. It’s been nearly a decade since Refn last stepped behind the camera for a feature, yet Her Private Hell feels less like a comeback than the next bold step in the evolution of one of cinema’s most singular auteurs.
Check out the intro and Q&A from Fantasia:
