The irony of Neon giving Danish provocateur Nicolas Winding Refn's latest erotic noir a wide theatrical release is that "Her Private Hell" will be some moviegoers' public one. Both times I've seen it, a fraction of the audience has walked out. This, I suspect, suits Refn just fine. To him, mass appeal is for rubes.

What turns him on is cryptic babes, brawling men and stagy fables of lust, rivalry and possession. Unpopulated nightclubs as empty as a cemetery at midnight. Hermetically sealed tableaux of haughty models daring you to look away from their perfection. You cannot apply logic to his work — every choice thumbs its nose at the real world — and I rarely like the overall result. But I can't help admiring Refn's commitment to the bit. As one person in the new movie sneers, "Eww, who wants to be relatable?"

"Her Private Hell" is an expressionistic sci-fi fantasy set in a skyscraper hotel that stretches into the clouds. It's equally fair to call it an art video destined to be projected on the backdrop of a dance floor. Let's play along with the former for the sake of the cast, who are deeply committed, to their own peril.

Elle (Sophie Thatcher) lives in the penthouse with her father, Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), and young and glamorous stepmother Dominique (Havana Rose Liu). The ladies were once best friends until they became family. Now, their bond is complicated. They exchange a lot of loaded stares. They also sometimes communicate in barks.

Here's where I confess that after two watches, I'm still hazy on the plot. The whole film is hazy — literally — with plumes of mist rippling through soundstages so stripped of life they resemble the bones of a dream. Refn and co-screenwriter Esti Giordani seem to see Elle as a mythological tragic hero, equal parts Electra and Oedipus. To us, she presents as a spoiled brat with daddy issues and a sexy stepmommy who gets under her skin. Does she want to hog Johnny Thunders for herself or replace him as Dominique's lover?

In her waking hours, Elle is the movie star of a "Barbarella"–like space adventure about an all-female crew who zips through a wormhole and crash lands on a crystalline planet. Dominique is in the ensemble as is a blond rube named Hunter (Kristine Froseth) who shows up at Elle's doorstep in mall-wear denim and then upgrades to desperate, cleavage-baring sequins. There's only one scene of the women on the job and no sense of a crew or a director. It's mainly an excuse for bullet bras.

At night, Elle shrugs on her father's heavy black coat and slips into a reverie about a myth in which a grief-stricken murderer called the Leather Man searches for his lost daughter. A biker-killer with glowing red eyes, the Leather Man expresses his angst by brutalizing other people's daughters. Sneaking up behind them in the darkness, he tears open a girl's rib cage and splatters her blood on the window. Caution: Queasier body fluids will follow. So will more walkouts.

Downstairs (and perhaps only in Elle's imagination), a soldier named Private K ("May December's" Charles Melton) wanders sidewalks that are Japan by way of "Blade Runner" to find his own missing child. Thatcher and Melton share the same carved cheekbones and pillow lips. Their characters may also share a soul. Refn has long been fixated on men who try, and fail, to protect their women. Elle's gender-fluidity adds a slight new twist.

Is the Leather Man human, monster or Satan? The script bandies about all three options, concluding that he's closest to a chosen curse. What's more clear is that starring in a Refn film is a devil's bargain. He has an eye for talent, elevating Mads Mikkelsen ("Pusher"), Tom Hardy ("Bronson") and Ryan Gosling ("Drive") early in their careers. But since then, he's made his own style the star. In "Neon Demon," he shot Elle Fanning like a million bucks, but gave her the personality of a flattened penny. Anything more would distract from his cool.

Thatcher, his latest anointed icon, fares no better than a butterfly pinned to his mood board. Refn is so enraptured by the sight of strobes flickering across Thatcher's mannequin-flawless features that, by the end of the film, I needed a break from her face. I had to see Fanning in a half-dozen better roles before she felt free of Refn's smothering gaze. Now, she's one of my favorites.

As in most of the director's movies, the characters behave like preening betta fish. Alone, they stare at their reflection. Stuck together, they battle for supremacy. A romantic misanthrope, Refn puts his emotions only into the visuals and music; he makes the most macho films ever shot in pink. His violent men — Scott's sinister dad and Melton's sad one — light cigarettes by flicking matches on their ears and teeth. More impressively, Melton manages to exhale a puff of smoke so thick that cinematographer Magnus Nordenhof Jønck can still see it through the set's fog.

One brutal knife fight pauses so a brawler can cue up a song on the jukebox that sounds like something Doris Day would slow-dance to. The orchestral score by legendary 84-year-old Italian composer Pino Donaggio (of Brian De Palma's "Carrie") is gorgeous, ever so slightly teasing the drama with the occasional violin stinger.

At the Cannes premiere of "Her Private Hell," I left irritated that Refn's first feature in 10 years had lazily recycled so many of his signature images: skin covered in glitter, cops warning men to take care of their daughters, the general sense that women were born to be purchased and consumed in back alleys.

The second watch, I accepted that Refn had made a movie mostly for himself and I had a better time with it. It helped shift my attention to the supporting cast: Shioli Kutsuna and Aoi Yamada make a playful tag team as two slippery helpers skulking around the margins. Kutsuna has an impish twinkle; Yamada mutely swans about in a daze like an opium fiend. Liu's Dominique sometimes loses patience and cuts through the languor with some common sense.

But the scene-stealer is Froseth's hungry-eyed striver, a comic sexpot with her own Marilyn Monroe-esque daddy issues. Tossing her blond locks like a hair-metal vixen, she's a needy, greedy, selfie-taking try-hard who — horrors — frets over her own mass appeal. The other characters loathe her. She's everything that gives Refn hives. And she's the best part of his movie.

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'HER PRIVATE HELL'

MPA rating: R (for some strong/bloody violence, sexual content, and language)

Running time: 1:49

How to watch: In theaters July 24

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