Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67523 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-09-14
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, Director's Cut, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: French, English, Japanese
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 116 minutes

Amazon.com
The most fearless film yet by France's idiosyncratic Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep) is an unholy marriage of ruthless corporate thriller and sinister science fiction. Connie Nielsen is the American "ice princess" in a French multination, an ambitious executive whose betrayals and invasive tactics would make her a villain in any other film. Here she's just a pawn in a shadowy conspiracy that may involve contemptuous new assistant Chloe Sevigny and fellow dealmaker Charles Berling and takes her from the legal (if unsavory) commerce of Japanese Internet porn to the brutal market of underground pornography. Assayas directs his modern corporate nightmare with a voyeuristic style, a hard eye for disturbing images, and more passion than explanation. It isn't his most audience-friendly film, but his portrait of international commerce and image culture in the 21st century is impassioned and haunting--cinema for viewers hungry for ambitious and provocative filmmaking. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Dystopia of the New Millenia
Demonlover is a very modernist film which deserves to be alligned with the great dystopic novels of the previous century, "We", "the Iron Heel", and particularly "1984" with one proviso its primary impact as opposed to literary is videogenic.
It tells the story of a corportate executive, appropriatly female, who will go to any lengths to succeed according to her on self-defined, narcisstic standards at odds with her objective appearances and in stark contrast to others expectations. Brash and domineering she uses a free floating cynicism to treacherously sell her corporate secrets to others for monetary gain thinking self-assuredly that her private intrique and machinations are curiously invioable, just as many criminals do. This is the first half of the film, in the second part of which so many critics don't like, all this ballsy swagger is shown to be an act of utter self-deluding fantasy; she has underestimated her antagonist and she instead of manipulating the system for her own gain she devolves into a most contemptible slave to it. A powerful morality tale for the times.

Intriguing, But Unsatisfying
I watched this film from start to finish, which suggests I found it interesting enough to stick with. But, I was also totally perplexed by its many nonsensical plot twists. For example, it took me far too long to figure out that it takes place in the "high rolling" world of corporate financed porn (an intriguing idea, given the fact that I had no idea such a world existed - I always thought of the porn industry as much more contained and independent).

DEMONLOVER is a little too stylized for its own good - its focus on form completely overwhelms its paper thin storyline. Connie Nielson is very good, but could have been so much better with a stronger script. I debated giving it only 2 stars, but felt the performances merited a stronger rating.

Jumbled mish-mash that garbles its promise
Where's the emotions and motivations for this contorted mess? Great camera work and suberb dramatic talent wasted on a plot that defies logic.