a-jw Where most reviewers think this movie only comments on new media and globalisation, with the porn industry as a means to an end, I feel it also makes great comments on femininity and female sexuality and does that in an increasingly unapologetically. At first Diane seems to be in total control and the only one with ulterior motives, but slowly it all spins out of her hands and out of her league. Only from this point onward we get a glimpse - just a glimpse - of what drives her, of who she truly is. Only tidbits of backstory are springled throughout the story, but they are enough to turn these characters into fully realised persons. The nervous cigarette-tokes seal the deal. There's so much more behind the surface than the script alone can say. Seemingly soulless people have genuine heart-to-hearts and lies are constantly confessions under a thin veneer.The only reason I give this movie a 9/10 is because of the second to last sequence in the film. It just makes the main character seem stupid. It broke the spell the film had cast on me.

julian kennedy Demonlover: 4 out of 10: Wow what an overlong train wreck of a movie. Before I begin to scratch the surface of the ineptitude of this film let me explain the few things Demonlover does right.Demonlover does some things very well. It has individual scenes that work on their own either as erotic vignettes; (Chloe Sevigny playing videogames in the nude , an Asian girl seducing a French man at a club after his lover leaves.) or plot actions (dosing a bottled water with Halcion) before the film ventures down the rabbit hole twenty odd minutes in.The general plot of Demonlover is a French conglomerate is looking to buy an adult anime company. Because of this, a rival Adult anime distributor has sent a corporate spy to put a kibosh on the proceedings. That is the story, there is some silliness about a for-pay torture and bondage site but ther story in a nutshell is an Anime buyout scheme.So how can a thriller dealing with bondage and Hentai and starring Chloë Sevigny, Gina Gershon, and the hot redhead from Devil’s Advocate, Connie Nielsen, possibly go wrong? Well for one thing, there are cloistered nuns that know more about marketing animated porn online than writer/director Olivier Assayas does. I often complain about movies where the writers and director have clearly never worked in an office (13 Going on 30 for example) but this is over the top. The French, as an example, are worried about a secret website that makes lots of money. If the website makes lots of money… wait for it… it probably is not a secret. Moreover, I am sure that cornering the online Hentai traffic is an unattainable goal. After all, how hard is it to draw new tentacle porn? In addition, I doubt many corporate spies scale the sides of buildings or poison colleagues. Moreover, with the silliest script this side of The Core you cannot depend on the ever confusing and contrived plot.I know I praised the sex scenes above but with this cast, I was expecting more, a lot more. Also I often did not know where the movie was taking place. (are they in Tokyo or France is a popular game you can play.) Then there is the car chase, at the end, that looks like an outtake from Vanishing Point. (As Tom Servo would have said “Meanwhile in another decade”)The film is overlong, very confusing, somewhat boring and the characters IQ’s seem to drop every scene. After the fifteenth fade to black transition, I actually screamed “end already” at the screen.In reality, this seems to be a badly done remake of Videodrome. Olivier Assayas is clearly no David Cronenberg. He cannot even tell a simple story in a believable and entertaining manner. Or take advantage of three of the hottest actresses in the business.

Thomas Gill I hung in there and watched this movie beginning to end ( 120 minutes ). And it was hard to do. But I love Chloë Sevigny as an actress and she alone kept me watching. Following the storyline was very difficult. Lots of amoral business folk and that sort of thing. But the film did have good visuals and a fast pace, with scenes in Tokoyo, Paris and even Mexico. French, English and Japanese were spoken back and forth thru the film, making it even more confusing. More disturbing is that we may be at a point where torture on the internet may capture lucrative business. Where does depravity end? Will people do anything for money?To summarize, given another chance, I wished I would have chosen a different movie to watch today.

gabrielcsaba The film looks slick, the actors are good, period. End of merits. Director Assayas needs to sit down and do some homework before he writes a script. You may not be familiar with things like corporate espionage and the porn industry -though if you're going to make a film about them, you certainly should- but being blatantly ignorant about "the Internets" is just unacceptable. This movie feels as dated in most of its plot contrivances as if it was made in the eighties, but it's only five years old as I'm writing this. I mean, things like: how can a website be "highly profitable" and "impossible to find" at the same time? And if so, how come a teenage kid just goes and finds it? Oh, them kiddos with them Googles and stuff...On top of this kind of ignorant devices it's pretentious, slow-paced, full of plot holes, and just doesn't go anywhere. It's hard to point my toes downward, but if I could, I would give this film a four-thumbs-down.