DEMONLOVER (NOT RATED) **

Directed by Olivier Assayas. 120 minutes.

Starring Connie Nielsen, Charles Berling, Chloe Sevigny, Dominique Reymond, and Gina Gershon. Released by Palm Pictures.

“People don’t see anything,” says the lead character of demonlover, the latest film from director Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Les Destinees), “they watch but they don’t understand.” My problem with the film stemmed less from the fact that I didn’t understand, which I can admit, I did not completely though it is obvious that you are not necessarily supposed to, but from the fact that this abstract essay of image, sound, and editing did not particularly move me one way or the other. The film is part surrealist, in the sense that Mulholland Dr. and Persona were, part Chuck Palahniuk (at least Fight Club), and part Sun-Tzu, with an ending that recalls echoes of Lost Highway.

Some would disagree with me. Critics have called the film a variety of things from a masterpiece to a head trip to brilliant and, last but not least, postmodern, a word that makes me more and more skeptical every time I see it pasted onto a critical blurb. To qualify as postmodern these days, a work of art must simply lack ordinary narrative structure, make some references to the future, and display people’s discontent with modern technology and quality of life. Maybe my problem with demonlover is that none of the characters are very interesting and certainly not likeable. And when the film goes off the deep end in David Lynch land, I should have been interested or intrigued, but I was not. It began to mean less and less to me whether or not I could either figure out or discover some sort of pattern in the movie’s labyrinthine narrative.

The film begins as a thriller in the Hitchcockian sense. Diane (Connie Nielsen, in a good performance), is an executive at a top corporate conglomerate who is in the midst of a battle for high-tech 3-D Japanese porn technology. She is a student of the Gordon Gecko school of morals, which we find out in the film’s first scene where she drugs a fellow executive, whom is then kidnapped and thrown into the trunk of a car. We meet some of the other characters with whom she works. There is Herve (Charles Bering), who has some obvious sexual attraction to Diane and constantly seems to be vying for her attention. Then there is Elise, the assistant to the kidnapped executive who has a hate/hate relationship with Diane- who can blame her? Both Elise and Diane speak in French for much of the first half of the film and we assume their characters are French. For the film’s second half, they speak more in English with American accents. Though the film takes place in Paris (and Japan), we are never really sure what nationality they are. Why? I don’t know.

In comes Elaine (Gina Gershon) in an “I Love Gossip” t-shirt. She is an executive from the U.S. company Demonlover that wants to do business with Volfgroup, the company that Diane works for. When we first meet her, she asks Elise where she can score some pot. The French-based company has some reservations in working with the American company, mostly because of a website called Hellfire Club that depicts brutal acts of sadomasochism. Elaine claims that her company has nothing to do with the site and any information claiming differently is an apparent act of corporate sabotage. We later find out the truth behind this. Meetings are held in Japan with a corporation that specializes in anime porn. The anime is quite graphic, showing females being raped by snakelike creatures. This is not the Tokyo of Lost in Translation, from last week, with its lost and lonely souls, but instead a hotbed of violent sexual tastes. Competition comes into the picture and a series of double-crosses, most of which we can only vaguely conceive, take place, as well as a few murders. There is also a particularly gratuitous rape and murder sequence that I could have done without. From here on out, it is a free-for-all of strange images, unexplainable conversations, quick change of locales, and chases through the darkened Mexican desert, which I will admit, were haunting.

What all of this means, I don’t know, but it seems obvious that you are not supposed to. I have absolutely no problem with films that defy linear structure. As a matter of fact, I am a huge fan of the films of David Lynch and Luis Bunuel and often find myself intrigued by films that lack cohesive narratives. However, what sets these other films apart from demonlover is that they draw you into their worlds and compel you to ask further questions. In Assayas’ film, the characters are so dreadfully cold and sinister, the exchanges between them seem so inhuman, and the nature of the business deal is not spectacularly interesting. So, what we have left is a collection of interesting images, of which there are a few. The desert scenes at the end, as I have already mentioned, have a unique, disturbing feeling to them. The film has an interesting visual look to it- grainy, but not muddy like many digital-video movies. The acting is impressive, especially from Nielsen. If you have seen Irma Vep, you might agree that Assayas is an interesting director. But while demonlover is elusive, it is not always compellingly so. The film ends with a scene that we are to assume is a condemnation, but of what exactly? The answer seems both too obvious and intangible. So, what end up with is a hall of mirrors that does not fascinate enough to keep wandering in search of an answer.