Available to rent for $9.99
March 12 - April 8
Directed by Olivier Assayas
2002, France/Mexico/Japan, 122 min
English, French & Japanese with English subtitles
New 2K restoration
This title is available to rent via Cinematheque at Home for $9.99. This is not only an opportunity for our patrons to see new cinema, but is an important way that they can continue to support independent film during this pandemic with 50% of all sales supporting our theatre.
“No one sees anything. Ever. They watch, but they don’t understand.” So observes Connie Nielsen in Olivier Assayas’s hallucinatory, globe-spanning Demonlover, a postmodern neonoir thriller and media critique in which nothing—not even the film itself—is what it appears to be. Nielsen plays Diane de Monx, a Volf Corporation executive turned spy for rival Mangatronics in the companies’ battle over the lucrative market of Internet adult animation. But Diane may not be the only player at Volf with a hidden agenda: both romantic interest Hervé (Charles Berling) and office enemy Elise (Chloë Sevigny) seem to know her secret and can easily use it against her for their own purposes. As the stakes grow higher and Diane ventures into deadlier territory, Assayas explores the connections between multinational businesses and extreme underground media as well as the many ways 21st-century reality increasingly resembles violent, disorienting fiction.
Reviews
It's a consistently exciting piece of moviemaking, but it's not a pleasant experience; it's one of the few recent movies that have the power to leave you genuinely shaken up.
- Charles Taylor, Salon
Demonlover has a dreamy ominousness about it, and a sorrowfulness that speaks to the artificial intimacies of cellular communication, digital images and dial-up porn.
- Steven Rea, The Philadelphia Inquirer
