Verified source report

Her Private Hell review – Nicolas Winding Refn’s shapeshifting fantasia is a dreamy swirl of strangeness

Cannes film festival: Refn’s film eludes definition as it moves through time and space, from doomy reality to strange dream worlds populated by quasi-Lynchian characters The title’s first word should probably be “His”. Nicolas Winding Refn has returned to Cannes with a bizarre new fantasia moodscape, a midnight movie of fear and dreamy disquiet, meaning … what, exactly? The setting of the film – a twist on the 60s pulp shocker of the same title by Norman J Warren – morphs and shapeshifts from place to place, with the antilogical procedure of a dream, from a supposedly real outer world to the inner space of hallucination and memory. It starts in a giant, empty hotel (whose colossal Stygian corridors are not unlike those in Refn’s Only God Forgives ) in the middle of a digitally rendered dystopian city, wreathed in the kind of mist that tends to conceal a serial killer, and people here are

Vinita Duniphin Culture Source report

What happened

According to The Guardian’s source item, Her Private Hell review – Nicolas Winding Refn’s shapeshifting fantasia is a dreamy swirl of strangeness, Cannes film festival: Refn’s film eludes definition as it moves through time and space, from doomy reality to strange dream worlds populated by quasi-Lynchian characters The title’s first word should probably be “His”. Nicolas Winding Refn has returned to Cannes with a bizarre new fantasia moodscape, a midnight movie of fear and dreamy disquiet, meaning … what, exactly? The setting of the film – a twist on the 60s pulp shocker of the same title by Norman J Warren – morphs and shapeshifts from place to place, with the antilogical procedure of a dream, from a supposedly real outer world to the inner space of hallucination and memory. It starts in a giant, empty hotel (whose colossal Stygian corridors are not unlike those in Refn’s Only God Forgives ) in the middle of a digitally rendered dystopian city, wreathed in the kind of mist that tends to conceal a serial killer, and people here are

Context

The development sits in VINI’s Culture file for readers following arts, entertainment, fashion, film, music, celebrity, and the business of culture. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The source item is dated 2026-05-19T15:41:06+00:00.

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Primary source: Her Private Hell review – Nicolas Winding Refn’s shapeshifting fantasia is a dreamy swirl of strangeness via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.

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Her Private Hell review – Nicolas Winding Refn’s shapeshifting fantasia is a dreamy swirl of strangenessThe Guardian - 2026-05-19T15:41:06+00:00

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