An unforgiving level of violence: Only God Forgives is a disturbing and divisive film

James Mottram

There were boos. There were walk-outs. And there were grumblings from the critical elite. Every Cannes Film Festival needs a controversy. This year, it was Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives, an ultra-violent crime film set in Bangkok, with scenes that make the brutal head-stomping sequence in the Danish director's 2011 cult movie Drive seem like a playful slap.

While Drive saw Refn win Best Director in Cannes and bestow his star Ryan Gosling with all the cool of early Steve McQueen, Only God Forgives walked away empty-handed, fans left unimpressed by Gosling's near-catatonic performance.

"My guess is Refn's partnership with Gosling and chances in Hollywood may both now be freeze-framed," said Nick James, the editor of the British film magazine Sight & Sound.

The bullish Refn remains unrepentant. “I can only do what I do,” he says. “Hopefully people will be turned off or turned on.”

Quite who will get "turned on" by Only God Forgives is a worrying thought, given the film sees Gosling's Julian, a Thai boxing-club owner and part-time narcotics dealer, contend with the murder of his brother Billy, slain by the father of the 16-year-old prostitute he raped and killed.

This is just the start; one scene in this blood-drenched revenge saga sees a luckless assassin tortured in the most squirm-inducing scene since Reservoir Dogs.

Refn simply shrugs. “I just must be very good at what I do, since everybody thinks they see so much more than what’s actually there.” In his eyes, “real fear” comes from building up atmosphere rather than spraying us with violent images.

Oddly, while the violence is shocking, there was as much of an outcry over Kristin Scott Thomas’s vile character. So often cast as the epitome of aristocratic elegance, here she plays Crystal, Julian’s mother, who forces Julian to avenge his sibling’s murder. “I was aware of the character being particularly nasty,” she says, “and it’s the sort of character, when I think about her and what I had to do to be her, it fills me with shame. I think it’s pretty horrid.”

Scott Thomas reports that one particular scene – where she unleashes a torrent of abuse on Julian’s unsuspecting Thai girlfriend – was rewritten with the help of her co-star. “Ryan was particularly helpful with some of the language; things that I never knew existed.”

Quite what Gosling thinks is another matter. He was a no-show at Cannes – immediately fuelling rumours that he was unhappy with the film. The truth was rather more prosaic: he was shooting How to Catch a Monster, his directorial debut, in Detroit. During the six-week shoot in Bangkok, Refn reports their "bromance" was very much on. "We were neighbours – we lived next door and we had adjoining balconies."

That Gosling speaks barely 17 lines of dialogue throughout is something that Refn sees as entirely in keeping with his past two films, 2009's Viking melodrama Valhalla Rising and Drive. "The language of Valhalla Rising and Drive and Only God Forgives is very much about silence." Leaving viewers uncertain is why the director estimates the film causes such a polarised reaction.

Even Refn’s absurdist humour didn’t help ease audience discomfort. “You kind of need to spice up the film with a bit of humour,” he protests. “It’s like in James Bond, the ultra villain always has a little bit of camp to them.” Then there’s the lavish over-use of red, with virtually every scene bathed in this vivid hue, lending it a feeling of early David Lynch. “I wanted to have … this old 60s Walt Disney feel to it.”

It’s a typically provocative Refn statement – that an existential Thai gangster film, full of brutality, can be influenced by the palette of wholesome Walt Disney cartoons. But then he originally intended to make a Bangkok Western, until he arrived in the city. “Whenever I make films, I set out with one ambition and it usually changes 180 degrees. And this movie went through the same process.” What it has become is something altogether more disturbing.

• Only God Forgives opens in UAE cinemas today.

artslife@thenational.ae

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