Director Nicolas Winding Refn, Elle Fanning, Jena Malone and Christina Hendricks of ‘The Neon Demon’ Discuss Beauty Standards and Female Solidarity

Allyson Gronowitz

The blood-drenched Los Angeles of “The Neon Demon” feels like a distant nightmare in the context of the bright and charming SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills. Writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn and cast members Elle Fanning, Jena Malone and Christina Hendricks opened up to Entertainment Voice about beauty standards, supportive women in Hollywood and the origin of the film.

Refn and the cast were coming off of two premieres in L.A. for “The Neon Demon,” a film that has made waves with its twisted take on the bloodthirsty fashion industry. Fanning, for one, has been enjoying the ride. Her older sister Dakota Fanning saw the film for the first time at one of those. premieres. “She loved it,” Elle revealed. “But one of the scenes made her sick.” Malone gasped in sympathy, but Elle smirked, displaying a shadow of her devious “Neon Demon” character, Jesse. “I was like, ‘Good!’”

Elle Fanning began acting at age three. Now, with 51 credits to her name, the 18-year-old has become adept at straddling two worlds. She is gregarious and grounded and she is as keen to discuss her high school graduation as she is to discuss her experience at Cannes.

“I went, now I can use past tense, to a regular school in the Valley that I’ve gone to since fourth grade,” Fanning explained. “When I do films, I have a teacher [who] goes with me. She works with my school, and they send all the work so that I can keep up.”

Fanning’s character in “The Neon Demon” possesses more of a myopic fixation on success, to the detriment of everyone around her. Asked about the nuances of her character compared to the “pretty evil” supporting characters, Fanning let out a laugh. “The funny thing is, I think that my character was probably the most evil of them all!” she said. “We talked about how she is, in a way, like Dorothy coming to Oz – but if [Dorothy] was the evil one. Jesse is like the toxic poison that corrupts everybody else.” Fanning noted that she and Refn made the character of Jesse even darker than she was in the script. “I like this film because, yes, it’s a classic ‘a star is born, she comes to a big city’ [narrative], but she has a plan the whole time and there’s this mystery underneath her. She uses her youth and innocence as a mask to disguise it.”

While the female models in “The Neon Demon” stab each other in the back at every turn, the real-life story in Hollywood is a lot different, according to the actresses. “Any film I’ve been on that has had a majority of women on it has been a very special, healing, creative, supportive environment,” said Hendricks who plays the head of Jesse’s modeling agency in the film. “The stereotype within workplaces of women battling is a stereotype that I was fed when I was a child that I’ve never actually seen reenacted.” Hendricks paused, grinning slightly. “Except for high school.”

Hendricks also discussed the film’s contemplation of beauty standards. As a 41-year-old woman, Hendricks considered the notion that she would have a different reaction to the film than one of Fanning’s teenage contemporaries. “If the image of beauty is a 16-year-old girl, how does that make me feel?” she mused. “I’m having a different emotion from someone her own age, which might just be jealousy or desire. Mine is a different experience.”

Naturally, the eccentric Refn had a different experience as well, one that actually led to the birth of “The Neon Demon” in the first place. “A few years ago,” he said, “I woke up one morning and realized that I wasn’t born beautiful. But my wife was. So I thought, ‘I wonder what it would have been like to be born beautiful.’” While promoting this movie, Refn famously declared that there is a 16-year-old girl inside of every man and he expanded on that idea: “Part of that fantasy that I think every man has . . . is being desired for one specific reason, which is beauty. It’s very superficial but it’s also very complex because beauty says a lot about us as people. And that’s why beauty is a subject everyone has an opinion about.”

In “The Neon Demon,” beauty is dangerously coveted and mercilessly pursued. But Malone (who plays the role of Ruby, a make-up specialist and frenemy to Jesse) briefly shifted the focus away from the film to contextualize the subject more broadly. “I would ask every woman and man in this room if you’ve ever felt exploited; if you’ve ever felt undersold by your own beauty or devalued because of your facial structure,” she said. “I don’t think it’s just about Los Angeles or the fashion industry or Hollywood. I think this is something that all of society is being affected by.”

Despite the film’s highly disturbing elements, Refn insisted that the obsession with beauty in the film isn’t completely deplorable. In fact, one of his goals with “The Neon Demon” was to promote the idea of embracing your own beauty. “Part of the film was a celebration of narcissism as a quality and the idea of loving oneself,” he said; as long as that doesn’t involve any bloodbaths, of course.

“The Neon Demon” will be released nationwide on June 24.