Little White Lies Magazine – Issue #114 Her Private Hell

Little White Lies — Truth & Movies. An independent film magazine with stunning illustrated covers and in-depth features on cinema’s most exciting voices.

Issue #114: Her Private Hell

Nicolas Winding Refn’s extravagant new picture — the realised vision of a death dream he experienced while his heart stopped for 20 minutes — is called Her Private Hell, and it is 100 per cent proof Refn. His first feature in a decade, following a sojourn making headfuck-inducing shows for major streamers.

The film follows Elle (Sophie Thatcher), an actor with daddy issues being stalked by a strange serial killer with glowing red eyes called the Leatherman. Her knight in shining armour is a monosyllabic GI named Private K (Charles Melton), who lets his fists do the talking. All of this immaculately framed and choreographed action plays out under the 18-tog duvet of Pino Donaggio’s original score — commissioned after Refn cold-called the Italian maestro as a fan, resulting in some of the most emotional music of his career.

In the tradition of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Her Private Hell is a late-night cult hit in the making. LWL are long-time NWR boosters, having adorned previous covers with Drive (2011) and The Neon Demon (2016).

In this issue

• Cast and crew interviews
• A global tour of giallo movies
• A deep dive into Kenneth Anger
• Conversations with idiosyncratic genre filmmakers
• The secret blueprints for a NWR-themed bar in Copenhagen, printed in full

The Cover

The fractured portrait of Sophie Thatcher is the work of Racheal Bruce, an illustrator and educator from Saint Louis, Missouri. Using markers, coloured pencils and ink, her figure-focused images imbue the feeling that a fantastical unreality could exist in our physical world. Of the cover: “I had a blast working on this fractured portrait of Sophie Thatcher! Balancing the repetition of her features and the sharp, geometric shapes was like solving a puzzle.”