For the first time, Refn is exploring that opacity through exaggerated femininity instead of fetishized masculinity. His male characters rage — sometimes loudly, sometimes silently — and his female stars aren't much different. They're more given to catty fencing and naked jealousy, but they still keep their motives and their capacity for violence hidden behind perfectly composed porcelain-doll faces, until they finally explode.

The protagonist is disturbingly eager to sell out

Jesse is "barely 16" when she comes to Los Angeles, looking for model work, and she's immediately in demand. The first agent who interviews her (Christina Hendricks) takes one look at her, then lays on her potential for success so thickly that it sounds like the setup for a scam, but she's entirely serious. Within the world of the film, Jesse has some indefinable "it," something that makes jaded designers and expressionless artists stop, look twice, and then gasp with admiration. It's a dark joke — whatever "it" is, audiences can only see it in the way people react to Jesse, and not in Jesse herself. She's no more attractive or vibrant than the other women who surround her, like admiring makeup artist Ruby (Jena Malone) and her model friends Sarah (Abbey Lee) and Gigi (Bella Heathcote). She's younger and more innocent, and there's still a softness and baby-fat roundness to her face. But it rapidly disappears as she enters a world that's literally objectifying, in that it wants to turn her into a sellable object.

"Are you food or are you sex?" Gigi casually asks Jesse, early on. Later, after an embarrassing audition, Sarah attempts to drink her blood, as if that might steal some of her power. A horrifying photographer (Desmond Harrington) strips her and applies body paint to her as if he's shaping a vase on the wheel rather than preparing a person for a picture. And a creepy motel manager (Keanu Reeves, in repulsive, energetic The Gift mode) openly regards her and other women as products waiting on his personal shelf.