Rating: 
Summary: Forget the bad press.
Review: My humble opinion is that all the bad press that this film has received (mostly from hoplessly middlebrow American critics) is simply a reflection of the intellectual bankruptcy of modern films and their makers, something which Assayas was most probably trying to guard against when he made this film. Critics like to mention stuff like "...not the most audience friendly film", which is just to say that the film isn't essentially "moral", "humanist", "just", easily understandable etc., etc., and we can't very well have that, can we.
It is a complex film, a difficult film, a trying film, just as all good art should be. Meaning is constantly deferred. I cannot begin to try and fathom the film, but that (I think) is not entirely the point anyway.
Rating: 
Summary: Demonlover, more like Boraphil....
Review: Ok, it doesn't rhyme, but that is what this movie is. So if you're thinking, cool cast, Connie, Chloe, Gina; I'll give it a try, think again. The acting is just fine all around. Hats off to them. But the movie is sooooooooo slow. The payoff ain't worth time. It is about corporate espionage and some Japanimation porn. If you want a dark twisted movie, rent Dirty Pretty Things. That movie rocks. Late.
Rating: 
Summary: Olivier Assayas View of the Corruption of a Character...
Review: Olivier Assayas creates a visually stunning film in a dark world where multinational corporations invest in anime porn with further interest to invest in 3-dimensional animated pornography. The investments in 3-D pornography attract large amounts of money as several clients seek investment opportunities. This also creates an atmosphere where corporate espionage becomes a tool to maneuver competitors as it could lead to a monopoly on the market of animated pornography. The only thing that drives the people in the business of animated pornography is the trail of money, which becomes a path of greed, violence, and murder.
The story begins on a plane flying from Japan to France where Diane de Monx (Connie Nielsen) poisons one of the executives in her company in order for a rivaling company to gain access to information in a briefcase. This leads Diane into a spiraling exploit as she is put in charge of the Japanese account that manages the business of animated pornography. When she enters the business transaction she is aware that she is being followed by an unknown source. Nonetheless, Diane takes charge of her position and advances through the world of pornography while balancing it carefully with the company and the laws of France. However, she displays no concern for people as she ruthlessly proceeds in order to further her self-interest.
In the environment of Diane's own self-interest there are other people that are also looking out for their own interests by counter-espionage. This leads Diane into a world of internet pornography and sadistic elements of interactive torture over the internet. These people are, however, much more ruthless than Diane as they have no limits to how far they are willing to go in regards to making money.
Demonlover becomes a quagmire of moral values as Connie Nielsen's character wanders a path where she loses herself to pride, greed, and desire. On this path Diane finds herself lost and in a desperate attempt tries to survive as her life soon becomes expandable. Assayas intends to display the corruption of the character and how this corruptive treatment affects the awareness of the character in an uncompromising situation. Initially the story flows smoothly as Diane's life does, but as Diane becomes entangled the story loses itself very much like the character loses itself in the complex environment of deceit and greed. This provides an interesting point of view which is similar to David Lynch's Lost Highway, but Assayas never creates the hallucinatory effect that Lynch does and the film does not regain its balance as it becomes apparent what has happened to Diane.
Rating: 
Summary: z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z................
Review: Parts of this movie put me in mind of those old sleek & sophisticated Nestle Gold Blend coffee commercials. Well coiffed & garmented fashionista androids mimicking human hormonal behavior. Other parts reminded me of Max Headroom on Thorazine.
Large parts left no memory at all. Truly one of the most numbingly dull movies I've ever seen. And I usually like French films - including those by Assayas. Speaking of which I had as much trouble following the English dialog as the French - they mumble & speed-talk so much.
I guess this movie's supposed to be an insight into what happens when "real life" merges with "video-game/anime world". Woo-woo. Trouble is whoever put this thing together never seems to have seen any kind of trippy dippy Anime films. Maybe they read deconstructionist dissertations on Anime culture instead.
The only unique property this movie possesses is the least appealing sex scene in the history of film. Wow. The most disgusting ugly bald fatso piggy you ever saw feebly wrestling beautiful zombie Connie Nielsen around in the sheets. Interminably. Until she puts a post-coital slug in his brain. If they could snip out this scene & play it throughout highschool-land, promiscuous sex would drop 90%, I guarantee.
Nice shots of rain-streaked windshields tho.
Rating:
Summary: Brave New World
Review: This highly sensual film uses the slick Emma Peel-in-a-skintight-jumpsuit-meets-the-Matrix veneer that most people associate with high stakes business acquisitions, fast cars and corporate espionage . . . and for the first half of the movie, that is exactly what is delivered---intrigue on a multi-national and multi-million dollar level showcased in exquisitely neoned Japan, overseas business class flights and minimalist board rooms. Diane, played to perfection by Connie Nielsen is the Emma Peel of a French investment house intent on acquiring a monopoly on Japanese animated pornography. Perfectly dressed and coiffed, she epitomizes the business woman who has it all: brains, savvy and a polished understated unfluctuating demeanor that make her hard to read and hard to penetrate. We watch her intriguingly non-react as she puts a woman colleague out of commission, discovers that someone else knows what she has done, make deals with an Internet pornography competitor on the metro and all around suppresses her intrinsic sense of womanhood as she stands by and watches----no smiles apologetically----a piece of Japanese anime explicit with enough sexist content to render anyone with the vaguest sense of feminism a bad case of the hives. The fimmaker's vision of people in general in a world consumed by a consumerism so out of control that it feeds off its own negative energy, is blurred; the defining line between men and women eroded by a viciously amoral competition.
Then comes the second half of the movie where so many things seem to happen for no real reason at all. Yes, we can see the varying factions surface as the desire to win control becomes more sharply delineated---but instead of making it all work somehow, where the message, although hidden, can be revealed by some careful consideration, the series of images seem to just run amok. At the end, Diane has reformatted herself a la Laura Croft to deliver the consumer with that which he desires. The message: I am unsure---perhaps intense interplay produces human anime with little sensibility other than winning the competition and delivering product. An unhumbled Diane glares out at the world from a computer screen---is she beaten---no---she has just metamorphed.
This film is not recommended to everyone. Those looking for a fluid plot will not be satisfied with its second half. However, if you enjoy the sense of the real world being shrunk even smaller in a global marketplace where nationality and language are no longer real issues and the Internet serves as a conduit for salving any desire, you may enjoy this director's vision.
Rating:
Summary: Insipid, pretentious crap
Review: This is, bar none, one of the worst movies I have ever viewed. It isn't bad like "Pluto Nash" bad (ie: funny bad) or "Godzilla" bad (low budget), instead it is one of the most convoluted, pretentious and self-important films ever made. The plot is actually interesting for a little while, but the movie suffers from "art-film wannabe" complex, meaning that the director thinks that confusing plot and dialogue make for classy, understated art. It is as if they thought "hey, some pedantic critic will find a theme/deep meaning for this work if we make it dark and use sparse dialogue!". All the more confusing is the use of American and British actors in what is essentially a French film; the bad French accents from the leading ladies is distracting and annoying. While it is generally well-acted, the performances reek of pretense and self-importance. Worst by far is the writing and the editing, which conspire to render this all but unwatchable. If you want a good euro-thriller, rent the original Dutch "The Vanishing", but stay AWAY from Demonlover.
Rating: 
Summary: who is the group??
Review: This was a complex movie about the seamy underworld of adult enertainment and one womans attempt to climb the corporate ladder. What I really would like to know, does anyone know the name of the all girl, Japanese group singing in the club in the sixth scene? Four women, 3 with blue hair and one with pinkish hair wearing vinyl dresses with silver accents. I also would like to know the name of the song they are singing. Anybody with info please contact rocknwroll@hotmail.com This film gave a keen insite into the culture of Japanese nightlife as well as reflecting the current trends and styles. Those with a tendancy towards ADHD should probably avoid this this movie,
Rating:
Summary: What's With the Negativity?
Review: When this opened here in San Antonio, the ad in the paper was very small. Upon arriving at the theater, I was astounded being the only person in the theater on a Saturday morning. Leaving the theater, I was like the Iraqi Army: in a state of shock and awe. I'm not sure why several reviewers here are trashing this film, because it is reflecting the times in which we live. For those of you who want to return to the days of Wizard of Oz, the Sound of Music and It's a Wonderful Life....stay in your homes and rent those DVDs because you just aren't ready to accept the new conceptual films that are coming from Europe.
Rating:
Summary: Sex? Voyeurism? Techno-mayhem? Slick futurism? You got it.
Review: You also have quite a few detracting problems. I must say, I'm surprised that there are no reviews for this item and I'm writing the first one. But then again, this movie has by-and-large, flown under most people's radar, and perhaps for most that is for the best. I should probably say I hovered between giving this movie 2 or 3 stars for a while before I settled on 3. 2 seems to say "This movie is not worth watching" while 3 better says what I feel - "Might be worth watching." Demonlover is a corporate intrigue and espionage film that seems to take place in the not-so-distant future, and concerns an employee named Diane who (ostensibly) works for a corporation looking to buy out a hot 3D cyber-pornography company called TokyoAnime. Also interested in these dealings are the fiercely, deadly competitive corporations of Demonlover and Mangatronics. The movie gives the impression that nobody is really what they seem in this movie, from Diane's boss, to her assistant (played by Chloe Sevigny), but you know, none of this really comes as any big surprise. Diane is not an ethical character, so when she gets more than she bargained for in finding out about a covert and dangerously-interactive S&M site, and soon... well, I don't want to give too many plot details away, but Diane raises the stakes for her own reasons... After this, the movie descends into a sort of surreal, confused madness, sort of like the turn David Lynch took with Mulholland Drive, but... er, not really. So, what's the problem? Well, for me, this movie never really distinguishes itself as or decides what it wants to be. It tries to put on some airs like it has the chops to be a high-concept art film, but a lot of it has that shoddy, direct-to-video, Cinemax pseudosexual thriller feel to it. This DVD is the R-rated version, and if you're looking for some direct, serious titillation, you'd probably be best served to look elsewhere, as more is implied than anything else. I consider the photography and the cinematography to be pretty bad - I understand what they were trying to do, but I don't like the final product. As I said in my topic title, some parts of this movie are slick, if they had gone more with the slick, stylized photography instead of the "What the hell am I looking at" school of photography, I think the results would have been superior. This is a movie with flashy people, multinational corporations and high-tech cities, about pornography and voyeurism. A movie like this demands superior shooting and photography, which, especially in the latter parts, it does not deliver. Many people will claim that the plot has no inconsistencies, and it takes you on the same wild, find-your-own-meaning ride that other, superior films do, but it doesn't. It tries the whole "confuse-you-to-make-you-really-think" ruse, but it's handled so ham-handedly and with such amateurishness that for me it doesn't work. But this film is an interesting one at least, there are interesting elements to it, but I'm not sure I can recommend it. It's not horrible, but I'm not certain I could call it good. It's a fair movie, could have been *leagues* better. But, like I said, it feels less like a high concept art film than it does one of those sleazy-without-too-much-sleaze direct to video throwaways.
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