Looking at Nicolas Winding Refn’s filmography, it’s hard to believe that Pusher and Her Private Hell were made by the same person. It only makes sense when you view them as part of an arc, as a director who made his name with gritty, in-your-face realism has gradually retreated into a heightened fantasy world. With Her Private Hell, the director has unhitched himself from reality entirely, setting his latest film in a Blade Runner-esque sci-fi city enveloped by a mist that makes campfire tales about supernatural serial killers manifest in the real world — whatever that is.
Refn is an aficionado of ‘70s and ‘80s exploitation films, whose languorous pacing and psychosexual stream-of-consciousness storytelling have been the driving force behind everything he’s done since his first —and, to date, only — mainstream hit, 2011’s Drive. Mixing elements of Jess Franco, Mario Bava (Blood and Black Lace is an especially prominent influence), Dario Argento, and ‘60s Japanese pop-cinema stylists like Seijun Suzuki, Her Private Hell drifts from sublime image to sublime image, loosely held together by bisexual lighting and daddy issues. There is a plot — two of them, actually — but what’s happening and why are not the primary focus of the film. Instead, it’s all about dialing in to Refn’s dreamy, cough-syrup frequency.
