DEMONLOVER (Virtual)

PRICE*: $10 ($8 members) | VIEWING WINDOW: 3 days
WATCH ON: Computer, tablet, smartphone, Chromecast, AirPlay (or use a HDMI cable to connect your computer or tablet with your TV)
NEED HELP? Belcourt FAQs
*Because we’re streaming through the Belcourt's ticketing system, we’re delighted to be able to provide member pricing for this film. When prompted, sign in or create a Belcourt account.

If you’d like to consider an additional donation to the Belcourt, we’d be most grateful. You can do so here.

“No one sees anything. Ever. They watch, but they don’t understand.”

So observes Connie Nielsen in Olivier Assayas’ hallucinatory, globe-spanning DEMONLOVER, a postmodern neo-noir thriller and media critique in which nothing — not even the film itself — is what it appears to be. Nielsen plays Diane de Monx, a Volf Corporation executive turned spy for rival Mangatronics in the companies’ battle over the lucrative market of internet adult animation. But Diane may not be the only player at Volf with a hidden agenda. Both romantic interest Hervé (Charles Berling) and office enemy Elise (Chloë Sevigny) seem to know her secret — and can easily use it against her for their own purposes. As the stakes grow higher and Diane ventures into deadlier territory, Assayas explores the connections between multinational businesses and extreme underground media as well as the many ways 21st century reality increasingly resembles violent, disorienting fiction. (New 2K restoration of the unrated director’s cut supervised by Olivier Assayas)

“DEMONLOVER is seductive purely as an art object, and vastly more difficult to digest as anything else…. It feels like the epitome of cool.” —Scott Tobias, A.V. Club

“Corporate vampires, bloody catfights, global cyber spy games — welcome to Olivier Assayas’ desert of the real…this elegant cyberthriller captures a certain state of the contemporary world with the acuity, sensitivity, and precision of a seismograph registering the planet’s tectonic shifts.” —Serge Kaganski , Film Comment

“DEMONLOVER is seductive purely as an art object, and vastly more difficult to digest as anything else…. It feels like the epitome of cool.” —Scott Tobias, A.V. Club

“A movie about becoming what you watch…. Is our virtual culture of violent images and hyperactive stimulation sabotaging our humanity? Might the technological games we think we're mastering be programming us into becoming soulless automatons? Unlike THE MATRIX, Mr. Assayas' variation on the theme comes without philosophical baggage and has no hero.” —Stephen Holden, New York Times, Critic’s Pick (2003)