Reviews
[TV Review] “The Returned” Episode 1.07: ‘Rowan’
This week on The Returned, we actually got a cliffhanger ending! In all seriousness, though, “Rowan” was another solid, if unremarkable episode of the series that still hasn’t done much to help itself stand apart from its source material. Yes, different things are starting to happen, but it just can’t seem to step out of Les Revenants’ shadow. Does that make it a bad episode, though? Not necessarily.
Simon
All of a sudden, Tommy installing security camera’s in Rowan’s house seems infinitely less creepy, since it was revealed that Rowan tried to kill herself a year ago. Winstead continues to get the best material in The Returned, as she has to go through a wide range of emotions throughout each episode she’s in. This one was no exception. After seeing Rowan lose all hope in the first scene, we see her anger gradually build as she realizes all of the wasted years she spent mourning Simon, a man who bailed on her and her unborn daughter on their wedding day.
Speaking of Simon, he still thinks that he has a shot at a life with Rowan and Chloe. After attempting to plot with Chloe (probably not the best idea), he just shows up at Rowan’s house, with the cops waiting. It is at this point we get the series’ most cathartic moment yet: Rowan confronts Simon about his suicide. Sadly, Simon doesn’t remember killing himself (or at least he claims he doesn’t). After trying to console her, Tommy shoots him. It’s a shocking way to end the episode, to be sure, but it’s highly doubtful that Simon is dead (again).
Camille
Camille’s story seems to be mirroring her Les Revenants counterpart exactly. After Ben exhumes her grave and discovers nothing but water in her coffin, he is brought to the police station and interrogated by Tommy. This of course leads him to Camille, Claire, Peter and Jack (who still don’t seem to care about where Lena is). In an effort to beat Tommy to the punch, they hold a meeting with the parents of the other dead bus crash children and reveal Camille.
It’s good to see revelations being made on the Camille front, considering she is the character we have spent the most time with this season. It doesn’t do much good to have her cooped up in a house and pretending to be fake cousin Alice. There is arguably something sick and twisted about Camille lying to the other parents about her communications with their dead children, thought anyone who watched Les Revenants undoubtedly knows that already.
Adam
In the biggest departure from Les Revenants, Lena finds Lucy’s necklace in Adam’s shed and (finally) puts two and two together. After trying to escape, it’s Tony of all people who freaks out and brings her back into the house and ties her up. This is an interesting move for The Returned, as it seems to suggest that Tony might be unhinged enough to murder someone else in order to repair his relationship with his brother. On top of this, when Adam returns and finds Lena tied up, he lets her go after telling Adam that he has been healed since coming back.
This switch is compelling, to say the least. What if Adam was cured of his mental illness after being brought back from the dead? Tony (rightly) brings up that he stabbed Lucy, but Adam dismisses that argument by stating he was out of it since he had just returned. I’m very intrigued to see where this goes in the final three episodes of the season.
Victor
Victor actually spoke tonight! It appears as if he is content to speak to other children (in this case Rowan’s daughter Chloe). He didn’t have much to do tonight, other than watch Nikki and Julie rekindle their romance and make out a lot (and I mean a lot), but he did get that brief moment of dialogue, which was kind of worth it.
Random Notes
- “Six years? Holy shit!” -Rowan, on realizing how long she’s been in therapy.
- After Adam lets Lena go, she runs into the street and pulls over an 18-wheeler to hitch a ride. Surely nothing bad can happen from that, can it?
- Oh, Helen. Dear, sweet Helen. You’re going to blow up the dam, aren’t you?
- The promo for next week’s episode, titled “Claire:”
Reviews
‘Her Private Hell’ Review: Nicolas Winding Refn Returns With a Hypnotic, Inscrutable Neon Fever Dream
Nicolas Winding Refn considers his first feature film in ten years, Her Private Hell, a resurrection. At the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, the filmmaker revealed that his return was inspired, in large part, by his own mortality. His need to create art kicked into overdrive after beating death in 2023, when his heart stopped for 25 minutes.
Her Private Hell is pure art, too, bearing the filmmaker’s neon and synth signatures, as well as a deep disinterest in scrutable storytelling. Much like The Neon Demon, Refn’s latest demands you bend to its wavelength: an expressionistic vision more interested in the artistic process than the narrative.
That’s not to say that Her Private Hell lacks plot; this sci-fi horror noir features two central overlapping plots. At the forefront is actress Elle (Sophie Thatcher), who lives in the penthouse suite overlooking a hazy neon metropolis with her father, Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), and young stepmom Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), who happens to be Elle’s former best friend before marriage got in the way.
To say that Elle has daddy issues would be an understatement, made worse by insecurities, the arrival of a new acting ingenue (Kristine Froseth), and a vicious killer prowling the city: the Leather Man.
The secondary plot follows the enigmatic Private K (Charles Melton), an American soldier in Japan with resolute vengeance on his mind. Whereas Elle’s world exists in a space of glamour and opulence, Private K pummels his way bare-knuckled through the sweaty backstreets ruled by local crime syndicates down below.
Refn, who co-writes with Esti Giordani, manages to corral a variety of seemingly disparate genres and influences into a clinically cold and cryptic whole. The filmmaker infuses his signature style with everything from ’60s sci-fi to Golden Age Hollywood melodrama to Japanese folklore, hung on the framework of a Dario Argento-style Giallo. There’s a prominent psychosexual edge to both Elle and Private K’s separate journeys, one that dials up to zany excess when it comes to the former character.
There’s an overarching sense of mystic mythmaking to Her Private Hell, with elusive seamstresses, played by Shioli Kutsuna and Aoi Yamada, dipping in and out like folkloric, omnipotent kitsune as they seemingly preside over the increasing chaos that entails brutal knife fights, Freudian melodrama, and a supernatural killer that brutally rips his victims apart. All of it told with Refn’s detached, sterile style.
It’s less a conventional movie and more a stream of consciousness, a collection of inspirations and personal thoughts and themes. Nothing is really explained in this nonsensical fairy tale fever dream. Thatcher gives herself fully to the spoiled Elle, whose affluent privilege makes her a bundle of raw, primal emotions that erodes her sense of identity and reality. It makes her the tonal and visual opposite of the elusive Private K., and much credit goes to Refn, Melton, and Thatcher for wringing compelling performances out of such nebulous, vague characters.
As with most of Refn’s work, you’re either on his frequency or not. Her Private Hell is wholly uninterested in explanation or convention. It’s also heavily disjointed and unhurried in its eclectic, sparse amalgamation of genre inspirations. Still, it’s tough not to fall sway to the magnetic allure of its exquisite, pulse-pounding sights and sounds, complete with an incredible score by legendary composer Pino Donaggio.
While it never fully pulls you into its tangled web of artistic musings, there’s a lot to admire in a technically stunning feature this fearless in its incomprehensibility and ambition.
Her Private Hell releases in theaters on July 24.
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