Her private is a neon-soaked, surreal sci-fi horror thriller film, The story takes place in a sprawling and futuristic version of Tokyo wrapped in an oppressive, artificial mist. This eerie fog empties out the streets and conceals a brutal urban legend and serial killer known as “Leatherman,” a phantom figure with razor-sharp diamond gloves who abducts and violently slays young women.
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Elle is a hard-bitten, struggling celebrity, model and actor. She is wrestling with deep-seated psychological trauma and a fractured relationship with her distant, eccentric director father, Johnny Thunders. Elle attempts to repair her emotional state and mend ties with her former friend-turned-stepmother, Dominique, while dealing with eager newcomers like the impressionable Hunter. Much of Elle’s reality feels like a phantasmagoric, psychosexual projection where she works on an ambiguous sci-fi film-within-a film on a low budget spaceship set.
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Running parallel to Elle is private K, an American G.I and soldier navigating the neon-lit criminal underworld, clashing with local gangsters and the Yakuza. Private K is on a harrowing, desperate mission to rescue his lost daughter from the clutches of hell and the mythic Leatherman-though hints throughout suggest private K and the elusive killer many one and the same. As the boundaries between reality, cinema and a dreamlike underworld dissolve, Elle’s daddy complexes, sexual frustrations and existential dread merge with private Al’s violent quest for his child, culminating in a blood-splattered descent into psychological trauma.
Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn
Cast: Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Havana Rose Liu, Dougray Scott, Kristine Froseth
Running time: 110 minutes
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