The Neon Demon and lurid pastries
A babe in the L.A. woods is swallowed up and spit out in this parable about the perils of vanity.
The Neon Demon
Nicholas Winding Refn gets to the heart of Hollywood, making good on his penchant for grotesquerie and wielding it as more than just an excuse to bathe everything in red lights. In this 2016 film, lurid neon and halting speech patterns assume their rightful place in his vision of LA, an electrifying gaudy mess that matches its shrill hollow spectacle.
Elle Fanning plays an aspiring model orphaned with nothing but her looks. She is menaced by wildcats, Keanu Reeves (as seedy motel proprietor), and the titular demon, which looks a lot like the Zelda triforce done up by James Turrell. (Perhaps the real threat to Hollywood, movies, and models is videogames—now that would be a take.) Fanning’s Beauty, fiercely pure, makes women fall in love and the jaded face of a misogynistic Marc Jacobs-looking designer alight into a huge grin like a flower unfurling in slow-motion. She is the sun, scorching inevitably protracting. Model-colleagues spasm with envy until they devour her. To reveal the sinister side of pretty, Refn short-circuits everything to give us an appropriately macabre finale. The movie is the highest demonstration of his ideals and skills to date.
Supermoon Bakehouse
The movie’s faux EDMness evokes a small but similarly statement-making bakery called Supermoon Bakehouse, which I can only describe as a viennoisserie by way of Venice teens. (In truth the bakery hails from San Francisco.) The shop, and its to-go boxes, are lacquered in iridescence and emblazoned with zealously chill koans. The unsheltered pastries are magnanimously situated on top of a slab of terrazzo instead of the usual plastic display case. The “tables”, low solid cylinders, are of the same trendy material. Low-to-the earth seating has a way of making you feel monstrous. No matter how I positioned myself or straightened my spine (backless stools), I felt like a gangly statue misplaced in a softly-lit gallery created by a Coachella-FOMO teen. My friend Candice who went with me held onto her usual poise. Despite Supermoon’s grammability, all of their wares are in fact delicious— above all their signature Cruffin, an untrademarked mutant. Luckily no one was there to see the pastry cream smearing my face.