The story begins on a plane flying from Japan to France where Diane de Monx (Connie Nielsen) poisons one of the executives in her company in order for a rivaling company to gain access to information in a briefcase.  This leads Diane into a spiraling exploit as she is put in charge of the Japanese account that manages the business of animated pornography.  When she enters the business transaction she is aware that she is being followed by an unknown source.  Nonetheless, Diane takes charge of her position and advances through the world of pornography while balancing it carefully with the company and the laws of France.  However, she displays no concern for people as she ruthlessly proceeds in order to further her self-interest.

In the environment of Diane's own self-interest there are other people that are also looking out for their own interests by counter-espionage.  This leads Diane into a world of internet pornography and sadistic elements of interactive torture over the internet.  These people are, however, much more ruthless than Diane as they have no limits to how far they are willing to go in regards to making money.

Demonlover becomes a quagmire of moral values as Connie Nielsen's character wanders a path where she loses herself to pride, greed, and desire.  On this path Diane finds herself lost and in a desperate attempt tries to survive as her life soon becomes expandable.  Assayas intends to display the corruption of the character and how this corruptive treatment affects the awareness of the character in an uncompromising situation.  Initially the story flows smoothly as Diane's life does, but as Diane becomes entangled the story loses itself very much like the character loses itself in the complex environment of deceit and greed.  This provides an interesting point of view which is similar to David Lynch's Lost Highway, but Assayas never creates the hallucinatory effect that Lynch does and the film does not regain its balance as it becomes apparent what has happened to Diane.

DIRECTED BY

Olivier Assayas

COUNTRY

France

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