WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Elle Fanning reprises a Sleeping Beauty-esque role in Nicolas Winding Refn’s shockingly sinister tale of a skin deep LA fashion industry.

As the opening scene begins we are faced with a startling foreshadowing of Jessie’s unavoidable fate. She lies motionless for a photo-shoot in a starkly lit studio, wearing a clinical latex dress and sporting a gruesomely impressive-looking prosthetic slit-throat. The relentless clunk and whirr of the camera flash is all we can hear as the camera pans out to reveal a sinister looking observer; a young man, who stares intently through his lens from the outskirts of the set, and of her life.

As Jessie tries to clean the fake blood off herself in a most elegant and inefficient manner, we are introduced to Ruby, a make-up artist who jumps in to assist Jessie,  later taking her under her wing and going out of her way to make her feel welcome. Ruby’s plain looks and off-camera profession make her seem like a trustworthy ally who won’t feel threatened by Jessie’s fresh and angelic aura. As Jessie adapts to this industry our senses are rewarded with some intense visuals and synth heavy soundtrack by Sia and Diplo. The cinematography is a treat on the big screen, with expansive settings and stark lighting which really echoes the frightening and lonely but also exciting atmosphere of the industry.

The comfort Ruby brings is darkened with the growing presence of Ruby’s other modelling friends Gigi and Sarah (played by model Abi Kershaw). They are hardened beauties with chiselled faces and limbs, and have clearly been elongated during production (Bella Heathcote who plays Gigi is only 5’6” in reality). At first one wonders why these girls feel so threatened by the comparatively short and round faced Jessie, who doesn’t seem like a typical catwalk model at all, yet is seen as a nonpareil by the insecure women. As the film slips further into Lynchian style decay, we realise that in the fickleness of this world, nothing really makes sense.

Everywhere Jessie goes she seems to be in danger, despite our expectations of a Hollywood happy ending. The casting of Keanu Reeves as a Motel owner with a penchant for underage girls, lulls the audience into a false sense of security; perhaps he will be a good guy and redeem himself in some way. We are never rewarded and his depravity is left as open and unending as the rest of the characters. The only person Jessie can really trust is Dean, the young man at the start of the film. He is the only one to bandage her wounds when she’s hurt or feel guilty when he learns of her true age. Jessie eventually pushes him away in her ever steepening climb to the top.

The increasingly sinister Ruby, played brilliantly by Jena Malone, also transmogrifies, as her lust for Jessie becomes out of control to the point where she attempts to rape her. After the frustration of this rejection, Ruby, who also works part-time as a “cadaver beautician”, goes to work in what is a particularly gratuitous scene which really tests even the least strait-laced of audience members comfort levels. NWR has incorporated every taboo he could manage to almost comedic effect.

The theme of animalistic predation is reiterated throughout the film, including a dramatic scene in which a mountain lion has ransacked Jessie’s motel room and is found lying on her bed, the sheets covered in blood. Such blatant imagery is present throughout, with the culminating scene revealing that the models Gigi and Sarah, have in fact eaten Jessie. This consummation not only signifies the predator catching the prey but also the desire of becoming what you consume in a ritualistic act of desperation on the part of the models.

As we reflect back on the events of the film, we much better understand the austere gaze of the young man through his lens in the opening scene. His look was not one of threat, but rather of warning and regret, perhaps born out of a sense of responsibility at simply being a bystander, a feeling which perhaps all of us can and should identify with.

All of this fantastical bizarreness creates a film that is both disturbing and at times humorous, but always intriguing.