'The Neon Demon' misses its target

The headlines generated by last month's premiere of "The Neon Demon" at Cannes - virtually all of which singled out the film's violence, cannibalism and lesbian necrophilia - were not sufficient to crush all hope that filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn had returned to the mastery he displayed in his breakout film, "Drive."

The noirish and violent 2011 drama won Refn the Best Director prize at that year's Cannes Film Festival and got the movie nominated for a Palme d'Or. Perhaps 2013's "Only God Forgives" - roundly panned for its stylish but empty mayhem - was a fluke.

No such luck.

In "The Neon Demon," murder, the eating of human flesh and that much-buzzed-about girl-on-corpse sex scene are all presented in service of a grisly critique of our contemporary obsession with superficial beauty. Working from a script Refn wrote with first-time screenwriters Mary Laws and Polly Stenham, the director brings plenty of stylistic assurance to the tale of Jesse (Elle Fanning), a naive 16-year-old aspiring model who has moved to Los Angeles from the hinterlands to make her name in the cutthroat world of fashion. Unfortunately, Refn's satire - if that's even the right word for it - cuts no deeper than the skin.

The film opens with a shot of our heroine, dressed in a glamorous frock and sprawled on an elegant divan ... and drenched in blood from what appears to be a gaping neck wound. Although it soon becomes apparent that it's a modeling shoot and the blood is fake, that shocking image foreshadows what is still to come.

In Refn's garishly lit vision, L.A. is an almost literal neon jungle, where a mountain lion is somehow able to climb into the seedy motel room where Jesse is staying one night. (The cat ultimately does no harm; the same cannot be said for the motel manager, a creepy, psychopathic rapist played by Keanu Reaves.)

More dangers are in store for Jesse once she has made the acquaintance of two older models (Abbey Lee and Bella Heathcote), both of whom are violently jealous of the teenager's fresh-faced beauty and surgically unaltered body. As the three chat in the ladies' room of a nightclub one evening, one applies lipstick. The shade, as noted by a sharp-eyed makeup artist (Jena Malone) who has befriended Jesse, is called Red Rum, in an evocation of "The Shining."

Subtle.

A sense of narcissistic overkill pervades "The Neon Demon," which throbs with an ominous techno beat and wastes many precious minutes of valuable storytelling by showing off its visual chops. Like Jesse and her catty catwalk cohorts, "Demon" seems to be staring at itself in the mirror far too long for its own good. It's as pretty as a picture, yes - albeit one with the sickly pallor of heroin chic, lit by lurid purples and plums - but it's an airhead when it comes time for substantive conversation.

"Beauty isn't everything," observes a supercilious designer (Alessandro Nivola). "It's the only thing."

If Refn is trying to skewer our cultural fixation with youth and good looks, his blade isn't up to the task. "The Neon Demon" attacks, but indiscriminately. It's sharp-looking but dull, hacking and plunging every which way, yet drawing no real blood.