Disc Reviews

My Life Directed By Nicolas Wending Refn Review

• 4th Mar 2015

The Danish director, Nicolas Wending Refn is the hot name director in Hollywood right now. In 2011 he made the intelligent crime drama Drive starring Ryan Gosling and followed this with Only God Forgives which was released last year and also starred Gosling. There were expectations that this was a follow-up to Drive, but Refn angrily rebukes this in the documentary as his new film has nothing to do with Drive. This fly-on-the-wall documentary is shot by the director’s wife, Liv Corfixen that is a brave project given that she is actually putting her marriage on the line with this expose. The film begins with the family spending time with renowned cult Mexican director Alejandro Jodowrosky who is reading tarot cards to the couple and advises Corfixen that she is must allow her husband’s artistic creativity an outlet while she admits that she would like him to be more of a family man. The film then cuts to her arriving with the couple’s two young children, Lola and Lizzie-Lou as they prepare to spend the next 6 months cooped up in a Bangkok hotel (albeit a quite exclusive one) while Refn films Only God Forgives. The director is in the final stages of pre-production and he is nervous about the challenge ahead.

We also see the lead actor in both of Refn’s Hollywood films popping over to the hotel and playing with the kids. Ryan Gosling comes across as a shy, intelligent and very likeable person without any sense of a major Hollywood star’s ego behind him. Shortly after there is one telling scene where the couple’s elder daughter climbs over the balcony of the rooftop swimming pool to collect some of her father’s clothes blown over the edge of the high rise penthouse room. While concerned that she could have been killed her father’s mind is clearly distracted. Without any real sense of how far into the progress of the film we really are, tensions between the couple clearly emerge. One thing that their relationship is built on is honesty. It becomes apparent that the Danish director carries some good old fashioned Scandinavian neurosis as he challenges his own worth, questions their relationship and her support for him while Liv states that she is losing her identity as a person and is just seen as his skivvy. Of course this can be levelled at any successful couple where the wife seems to be filling the traditional role as mother and nurturer of children, or in other words the little woman while he is the provider. More so given that many consider this particular filmmaker an artist.

The viewer gets to see a few scenes of Only God Forgives: the motorcycle street shoot-out and Kristen Scott-Thomas as Gosling’s evil mother meeting her sticky end. The film does not end with the wrap party or indeed at the Cannes Film Festival where it received mixed but mostly favourable reviews (something Refn believes is essential to making an interesting film). As we follow the making of the film and the Cannes Film Festival long after its release and he is able to relax the director is still filled with this self doubt which seems to act as the driving force behind his creativity and artistry. The whole process will undoubtedly be repeated with his next film (this time filmed in LA), The Neon Demon, not set to be released until next year.

The only other extra on the disc are trailers of Drive and Only God Forgives.

Chris Hick