Cannes Review: Only God Forgives (2013)

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Yayaying Rhatha Phongam
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Country: France | Denmark
Genre: Crime | Drama | Thriller
Official Trailer: Here

“Remember girls, no matter what happens, keep your eyes closed.”

It pays off to know Nicolas Winding Refn’s back catalogue before walking into Only God Forgives and expecting a follow-up to 2011’s Drive. Returning to the Croisette with his ninth feature, the Danish auteur reveals himself to be the obsessive, style-driven director we saw in Valhalla Rising (2009). The first press screening was greeted with cheers and boos, a measure of how divisive this is playing out among critics, and a bad sign for its commercial potential in America.

I have always suspected Ryan Gosling was more slave than master to Refn’s subversive vision of machismo. Refn, who has a twisted sense of humour, may also get off on casting the good-looking Notebook actor as chilly, ultraviolent men.

Ryan Gosling is Julien, younger brother to Billy (Tom Burke), owner of a Muy Thai boxing club in Bangkok. Billy and Julien use the club as a front for drug smuggling. When Billy is murdered for raping and killing a 16-year old prostitute, his mother Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas) arrives from America to bully Julien and everyone around her into exacting vengeance. A singer and probable sex worker named Mai (Rhatha Phongam, all smoldering glances) poses as Julian’s girlfriends to please his mother, to little effect.

I have always suspected Ryan Gosling was more slave than master to Refn’s subversive vision of machismo. Refn, who has a twisted sense of humour, may also get off on casting the good-looking Notebook actor as chilly, ultraviolent men. In OGF, Gosling is a largely silent foreground in Refn’s compositions. Uttering 17 lines over the course of 90 neon-drenched minutes, Gosling is inhabited by the film’s mood rather than stamping his performance over the story.

As a stylist Refn is superb, drenching his Thai sets in reds, yellows, composing hallways, black doors, hanging lights and beads; lots of phallic and vaginal imagery, exquisitely if ponderously executed. As a writer, he is terrible. “I will find him,” one gangster tells Crystal, “And I will kill him.” The clarification is unnecessary, especially over Drive composer Cliff Martinez’s pulsing score.

Cast against type as emasculator-in-chief, Kristin Scott Thomas is foul-mouthed, cruel, and like Albert Brooks’ knife-wielding gangster in Drive, you find yourself indecently enjoying how dirty this actor can get. More opaque is policeman Chang, played by veteran Thai actor Vithaya Pansringarm. Depending on how you look at it, Chang is a judge and gatekeeper of order, punishing Julian’s family for Billy’s crime, or he is the übermench to Gosling’s incompetent and maybe impotent (if I’ve read Refn’s symbols right) Hamlet.

Style is so front-and-centre, the story and dialogue lag so far behind, that OGF often feels like an art installation piece, providing exercises in extremism rather than a narrative experience.

OGF looks like Wong Kar-wai meets Stanley Kubrick and sounds like The Shining meets Vangelis, interspersed with C-pop karaoke translated into Thai. Style is so front-and-centre, the story and dialogue lag so far behind, that OGF often feels like an art installation piece, providing exercises in extremism rather than a narrative experience. Whereas Drive’s violence exploded like the male rage it represented, here the gore is surgically prolonged to test the audience rather than service the paint-by-numbers family feud plot.

Only God Forgives continually sports head-on collisions of arthouse and trash, pitting extended dream sequences against katana- uzi-weilding cops. The resulting sparks are hard to interpret; it requires a second viewing to determine if Refn is all style and no substance or if there is a worthwhile reading in Refn’s sadistic set pieces. To his credit, Refn has used Drive’s success to experiment as an art rather than concocting another B-movie mashup with great music.

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Alex Griffith

Alex is a recent University of Toronto graduate. He is studying Mandarin, going to film festivals, and prepping on his film lore like QT in the 80s. If you're in Beijing over the next few years and do film journalism, get in touch!

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