Here we have it, Lana Del Rey’s 30-minute movie ‘Tropico’, produced like a wide screen Hollywoodien super-production (it was shown at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood this past week) and starring Lana Del Rey as the virgin, the sinner and I am not sure what else. I am not sure of what I have seen either,… is it supposed to have some deep meaning or all these succession of words and imagery are just there to look pretty and important like Lana Del Rey’s hair?
John Wayne, Jesus, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and Lana as Virgin Mary are first there, bathing in a hazy light, and it looks like heaven-on acid for a short time. Next, she is a sort of Eve with an albino Adams (interesting choice of model Shaun Ross) dancing with unicorns and white snake, and it takes forever for her to eat that red apple, doing some never-ending languishing lap-dances over ‘Body Electric’! Then paradise is over, it’s trailer trash, steamy sex scenes, pole dancers, money, guns and tattooed bad guys, a succession of images and a verbal diarrhea voiced by Del Rey with her most tragic-born-to-die tone.
There is another song, (‘Gods and Monsters’) then a sex orgy or more wordy sentences by Lana (she recites Allen Ginsberg’s Howl), more crimes and a weeping virgin in the sky over Lost Angeles, … the couple steals lots of money and romantically flees away in a car ending up in a field at sunset while we hear ‘Bel Air’… expect a lot of these slow-mo scenes under the sun with killing orchestrated strings, Jesus, what was that? Bonnie and Clyde or Out of Africa? May be they die at the end, or this is redemption, ascension, canonization, who knows? They seem to float away to join the John Wayne-Elvis-Marilyn heaven crowd, because this is Los Angeles after all and old stars hang out in the sky above.
With its faux David Lynch/LA Confidential/old-cinema look, this new Lana Del Rey’s clip will make people speak, there’s no doubt about it, it’s not your average Katy Perry’s video! Directed by Anthony Mandler, it’s quite ambitious, the film wants to touch all the myths and symbols at once, but doesn’t manage to tell anything new. It’s really trying very hard to be intellectual and artsy, but I was kind of bored at the end.