The Neon Demon at Cannes: One critic yells ‘trash!’, another gives it a five-star review

Drive director's 'getting-eaten-by-LA fantasia' is proving divisive

Cannes Film Festival audiences are notorious for wildly disagreeing over movies, to the point where it’s almost become a badge of honour for their directors, and Drive filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest offering, The Neon Demon, proved particularly polarising last night.

Early reviews are in, with Kino-Zeit's Beatrice Behn calling it an "absurd jerk-off lolita fantasy in a slow-motion sparkly neon dress with a side order of 90s music video aesthetics," and another critic simply yelling “trash!” in Spanish during the screening.

Described by one as a “getting-eaten-by-LA fantasia”, The Neon Demon centres on a young model played by Elle Fanning trying to make it in Hollywood but getting chewed up and spat out by the system.

The premise might sound a little hackneyed, but not everyone disliked it.

Little White Lies magazine gave it a 5-star review, declaring it a “beautiful dark twisted fantasy”.

It is apparently as grisly as you would expect from NWR, one scene involving scissor-based self-mutilation, another, necrophilia.

"One morning I woke and realised I was both surrounded and dominated by women," Refn said when he first announced the film. "Strangely, a sudden urge was planted in me to make a horror film about vicious beauty.

"After making Drive and falling madly in love with the electricity of Los Angeles, I knew I had to return to tell the story of The Neon Demon. This movie is a manifestation of the strong ties between us and will lead to many more adventures."

Kristen Stewart’s new film Personal Shopper faced a similarly inconsistent response at Cannes earlier in the week, initially getting booed and then later receiving a standing ovation.