Memories of cinema past and present come rushing at you like 2001’s Star Gate sequence in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell, his first return to cinema since 2016’s Neon Demon and his first project since dying for 20 minutes from a serious heart condition three years ago. Somehow, it was excluded from the Cannes Film Festival’s official competition in favor of films that look very much like 20^th-century television, but so far Refn’s film is the only suggestion at this year’s event that one of its key directors is even remotely curious as to what the real future of film might look like — as opposed to a  mess of known IP and AI recreations of people who’ve been dead for 50 years. It seems the French, who once disdained le cinema du papa, have a little bit of catching-up to do.

The film it most closely corresponds to is last year’s Resurrection by China’s Bi Gan, another awake-dream that aims to haunt rather than entertain (although the two things are by no means mutually exclusive). In terms of art, it brings to mind ballet, since so much of what’s important in that medium is hardly what you’d call storytelling in the Hollywood narrative sense. To expand on that further, it would be impossible to discuss the power of this film without mentioning Pino Donaggio’s phenomenal score. Bringing much-needed context to Refn’s style-overload, Donaggio’s achingly emotional soundtrack guides the film in a way music hasn’t since the early silents, or the heyday of Powell & Pressburger, and even, at a push, the experimental films of Kenneth Anger.

What’s it about? Whatever you like. The setting is a surreal futuristic Japanese city of the most unrealistic high-rise kind, and at the story’s core is Elle (Sophie Thatcher), who is about to make a film with a younger influencer type named Hunter (Kristine Froseth). Hunter is obsessed with fame and obsessed with Elle, and the whole film draws quite heavily, in a similarly symbiotic way (whether knowingly or not), on Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 psychodrama Persona, which no genre director ever has ever not found endlessly fascinating. As they prepare for the shoot, Hunter meets Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), Elle’s former lover and now her father’s new wife. It’s a complication that obviously hurts, but Hunter is either slow on the uptake or, more likely, couldn’t really care less.

If we’re going to apply film-school formalism to a film that intends to live rent-free in your imagination whether you want it there or not, the “inciting incident” that the girls see a murder in a nearby tower block, and a young woman is defenestrated. It corresponds to the myth of The Leather Man, a tormented, Orpheus-like demon with piercing red eyes and razor-sharp diamond-studded gloves who stalks and kills young women in a bid to replace the daughter he lost to the underworld. We then jump-cut to a scene from a breathlessly exciting space movie, with Elle starring as the leader of an female sci-fi movie that looks like a fantastic space-opera version of Tarantino’s Fox Force Five and which serves as a reminder of Refn’s past interest in remaking Barbarella.

Things get more puzzling and more interesting — depending, of course, on your tolerance for ambiguity — with the arrival of Private K (Charles Melton), an American GI on the trail of The Leather Man, avenging mistreated women wherever he sees them, and drawn like a moth to the dress shop where he used to shop for his now-missing daughter. Private K isn’t at all connected to the main story, but as in Refn’s Thailand-set horror-thriller Only God Forgives, there is a sense that, somehow, justice can be willed into life in the east, and there is a sense that — perhaps — Elle has somehow summoned Private K into being, as the father she will never have.

How does it all fit together? Well, it does and it doesn’t, and Refn leaves you alone to figure out the true significance of The Leather Man and his two fabulously gnomic assistants (Ms. S and Ms. T). The genius of Her Private Hell is that, like a kind of visual ASMR, it offers nothing really concrete, just a lot of satisfying triggers and sensory associations. The actors feel that energy too, and the performances almost dare you to follow them, experimenting wildly with their characters in ways that make only the most subliminal kind of sense.

Is it pretentious? You bet! But it’s the kind of pretension that’s been missing for far too long in cinema; where once critics used to applaud Luis Bunuel for casting two actresses as the same character in 1977’s That Obscure Object of Desire, now they castigate Christopher Nolan for putting Elliott Page in The Odyssey.

Her Private Hell is either for you or it isn’t and you’re either for it or you aren’t. Either way, this is a film that demands you pick a side.

Title: Her Private Hell
Festival: Cannes (Out of Competition)
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Screenwriter: Nicolas Winding Refn, Esti Giordani
Cast: Sophie Thatcher, Havana Rose Liu, Kristine Froseth, Charles Melton
Distributor: Neon
Running time: 1 hrs 49 mins

Arts

Mother Mary
Director: David Lowery
A24, Topic Studios, Access Entertainment
In Theaters: 04.24.2026

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” or whatever the fuck those silly little Catholics say. With David Lowery’s ninth feature, our dear Mother Mary is anything but full of grace. Though she is full of something … g-g-g-GHOSTS! 

Mother Mary follows a distraught pop star (take a wild guess at her name), played by the always lovely Anne Hathaway (The Princess Diaries, The Devil Wears Prada), who dramatically ends up on the doorstep of her ex-best friend and costume designer, Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel, Chewing Gum, Black Mirror). She confesses to Sam, after barging her way into her secluded design studio, that she needs a dress that feels like “her.” This is something she feels her current team of designers can’t do and is very important, as she’s performing a new unreleased song to celebrate her comeback. During the creation of the gown, the two women reminisce and catch up, all in the same haunted breath. During their heart-to-heart (pun intended), they both realize that at some point since their separation, they each have been taking turns experiencing a haunting by the red, shapeless form of a (what they both determine is at least female) “ghost.” 

Now, not to sound like a broken record, kids, but what is my favorite saying? That’s right, “there are no perfect movies,” and Mother Mary is an example of a very complicated and imperfectly okay movie. Lowery’s writing is, at times, far too abstract or obtuse, which can lead to quite a bit of confusion for about 100 of the film’s 112-minute runtime. Before it’s clarified, the relationship between the two female leads is hard to decipher. Are they best friends, former lesbian lovers or a secret, worse, third option? Does this red ghost actually have anything to do with unresolved feelings these women still have for each other, or is it just aesthetic? 

There are also interesting “visions” Sam gets when talking things through with Mother Mary that feel somewhat like they tangle the film’s overall seam. It also lacks a lot of raw edges you would normally see when two women discuss a “friendship break-up.” Mary Mother also has yet to break the curse of the inaccurate on-screen popstar portrayal. I’m not sure why, but for some reason, Hollywood cannot get the feel of a popstar just quite right on screen. Mother Mary is supposed to be Lady Gaga, yet it feels like her on-stage scenes are what dads imagined watching Hannah Montana must’ve looked and felt like to their daughters. This is something that seems unfathomable when you have Jack Antonoff and Charli XCX to help write the soundtrack. 

That being said, once the ending hits you in the face and you finally get the full picture that Lowery is painting, the film saves itself. Lowery does something interesting and unique when it comes to the haunting genre of horror, as his characters are not haunted by ghouls and goblins but by emotional moments or memories in time. This is something that, when done right, is the epitome of beauty and is frankly more terrifying than any jumpscare by a James Wan demon. What’s more haunting than the what-ifs and what-could-have-beens of an intense connection with another human being, romantic or platonic? What’s more punishing than being the one who committed the sin that severed your red thread connection? Lowery also puts the infamous Bechdel Test to shame, as there is not a single male character with dialogue for the entirety of the film.

Do I love what Lowery is trying to do here? Yes. Does he stumble and fumble along the way? Absolutely. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t see Mother Mary, but also if you miss it … you’re not missing much. —Yonni Uribe

Read more film reviews by Yonni Uribe:
Wasatch Mountain Film Festival Review: Protecting Our Playground
Film Review: The Drama

3.5/5 stars

The American filmmaker started his career with 1994’s Little Odessa, starring Tim Roth as a Russian-Jewish hitman operating in the Brighton Beach area of New York. His next two films, The Yards (2000) and We Own the Night (2007), kept him ensconced in the world of low-life criminals.

Paper Tiger also casts the Russian mob as the antagonists. Set in 1986 in Queens, New York, it stars Miles Teller and Adam Driver as the Pearl brothers, Irwin and Gary.

Irwin (Teller), an engineer, is married to Hester (Scarlett Johansson) and has two teenage sons: Scott (Gavin Goudey), who is about to turn 18, and the younger Ben (Roman Engel), who is diligently studying for his exams.

Gary (Driver), a former policeman who still has connections on the force, encourages Irwin to team up and create an environmental clean-up business involving the filthy Gowanus Canal.