At the start of his career, Nicolas Winding Refn was so dedicated to capturing reality that in Pusher, all the onscreen cocaine was genuine, and in Pusher II, its even grittier sequel, the gang members were played by actual criminals. The Danish auteur has since swung the opposite direction, setting his latest film, Her Private Hell, in a magical, neon hotel floating up in the clouds. The tone is so abstract that hazy smoke persistently hovers in the background, dialogue is recited at a pace slower than a filibusterer in court, and Hans Christian Andersen is winkingly brought up in conversation. At any moment, someone could wake up, revealing the entire film was a dream, albeit one conjured up by the director of Drive.

Then again, not dissimilarly to Pusher II, Refn casts movie stars as movie stars. Residing in Tower Hotel, Elle (Sophie Thatcher), Hunter (Kristine Froseth), and Dominique (Havana Rose Liu) are the leads of a kitschy sci-fi, Candyfloss. Away from set, they lounge around in outfits as outlandish as their fictional spaceship-flying counterparts while espousing on personal drama: Dominique is marrying Elle’s father, a partnership complicated by the two women’s erotic tension; Hunter literally crawls on all fours to win the approval of a filmmaker, Nico (Diego Calva), who declares, “I love freaky shit.”

In a parallel storyline, a glove-wearing serial killer, Leatherman, is slicing up young women like he’s escaped from a Dario Argento slasher. Chasing him down is a former American GI, Private K (Charles Melton), who’s avenging his dead daughter, battling the yakuza, and somehow entering the world of Candyfloss. As a filmmaker, Refn alluded to his giallo tendencies with the lurid lighting of Only God Forgives. Here, he recognises – and, crucially, relishes – the absurdity of the genre. When the Leatherman slays a victim, she screams a single word: “Daddy!”

When I meet Refn in London in early September, he immediately tells me why Her Private Hell is his most esoteric film to date: in 2023, he had a leaking heart, meaning he was dead for approximately 25 minutes. “Prior to that, my creative flame had burned out,” he says. “I didn’t have anything in me. I was at a sense of artistic retirement. To reignite it, they had to literally operate on my heart and bring me back from the dead. Even though it’s traumatic, it’s actually the best experience I’ve ever had, because it gave me a chance to live again. Now the flame is red hot, as if I was 24 – but I’m 55. I have the arrogance and curiosity of youth again.”

Refn explains that Pusher II and III are “better” films than the first one but lack its attitude. “The first time you make something is the best time, because it gives you a sense of childish excitement. Her Private Hell is the first film after being brought back from the other side. That in itself becomes the first time.” What would he have done if he hadn’t died? “That’s the thing. It was over. I had nothing to do. I would have ended up doing boring advertisements.”

Her Private Hell is Refn’s first film since 2016’s The Neon Demon. However, in the intervening years, he directed two expensive streaming shows, Amazon’s Too Old to Die Young and Netflix’s Copenhagen Cowboy, both taking what general audiences despised about Only God Forgives (slow-burn storytelling, minimal dialogue) and stretching those elements to patience-testing extremes. While Her Private Hell is under two hours, it’s paced like his TV output, allowing (or forcing) viewers to luxuriate in the images during lengthy silences.

“I worked with the actors to be very still and precise,” he explains. “That gives it a form of artificial presentation, because the world they exist in is all built. It’s a theatrical world, a bit like an opera. They perform their lines like they’re singing in an opera.” Can the scenes be watched in any order? “Oh, yeah. You can click between the situations as much as you want.” Fans can remix the film? “I encourage that very much.”

The camera also unashamedly celebrates the ensemble’s beauty. The female characters, already dressed like they’re in a fashion shoot during their downtime, decide go to, of all things, a “uniform night” at a sleazy club. Meanwhile, Melton is frequently shot topless with glistening sweat running down his abs, sometimes with his face not even in the frame “It’s a kind of objectification of flesh,” says Refn. “It’s like playing with action dolls, and I can place them around these sets I’ve built like a dollhouse.”

I wanted it to feel like when I was eight years old, clicking channels on a television

Juxtaposed with Tower Hotel protruding through clouds, Pino Donaggio’s swooning, operatic strings allude to a vision of the afterlife. I bring up Refn’s 2003 thriller Fear X in which the camera enters John Turturro’s headspace and the screen turns red. Perhaps in 2003, Refn was a young filmmaker experimenting with colour. Now he’s fully addressing through cinema what it’s like inside the brain of someone who escaped death?

However, Refn – I think comically – frowns at the question. “Fear X is a movie I rarely talk about, because I consider it a complete failure on all fronts, both artistically and financially. But I was happy to have failed at that age, because it set my path straight.” After going bankrupt through Fear X, Refn wrote and directed Pusher II and III, knowing they would be hits. “After the Pusher universe, I went into unreality with Bronson and moved forward. If it wasn’t for that extreme failure, I wouldn’t be sitting here.” Does he actually consider Fear X an artistic failure? “Very much. But failure doesn’t mean it’s not interesting.”

The abstract nature of Her Private Hell, he explains, is a deliberate mish-mash of emotions, genres, and storylines. “I wanted it to feel like when I was eight years old, clicking channels on a television, and you could travel into an experience, and do the same again, and lose yourself in a kaleidoscope of mini-impulses.”

Ironically, Refn’s two TV series are the exact opposite, and more like losing the remote control while wondering what’s happened to the screen’s colour settings. I ask why Too Old to Die Young ends on such a short episode. Did he run out of time or money? “No, no, no. It’s like an epilogue of a book. With Amazon, you don’t run out of money. They print more money. What I made at Amazon, I enjoyed, and there were no restrictions. It was afterwards that they realised what I had made, and they decided to bury it. It was a lot of good work, but Amazon was scared of it.” They wanted a 10-hour Drive? “I don’t know what they wanted. But that’s not for me to say. I do what I do. I’m in the Nic Refn business.”

Refn, then, is uncompromising, and he’s still clearly the filmmaker who turned down directing the James Bond film Spectre to instead do Only God Forgives, preferring to have complete creative control. Subsequently, Her Private Hell isn’t for everyone. At the press screening, one critic unleashed a sweary rant after the end credits to everyone in the room. “It’s not that I enjoy it,” says Refn on split reactions. “But polarisation is a great way to penetrate the mind, and plant a seed. Whether you love it or hate it, that’s irrelevant.”

Refn’s next film is Maniac Cop, a comic-book adaptation he nearly made a decade ago. He’s evasive as to whether he’ll direct it like the old Refn, or if it’ll go further into the style of Her Private Hell. When I bring up videogames and his friendship with Hideo Kojima, Refn reveals he’s not much of a gamer (aside from Donkey Kong and Grand Theft Auto) but is fascinated by the artform. “Harmony Korine is right in the sense that because of the evolution of technology, films have become to stagnate. Films can be sterile unless you rediscover the medium in a new way.”

Assuming he can’t die for 25 minutes in between every film, how will he continue to push things forward? “It’s staying true to what you want to do. Singularity is still futuristic.” If he knew how to make Pusher II and III guaranteed hits, he knows deep down what audiences really want? “I try not to think like that. I don’t seek validation. I don’t care what other people think. If you do exactly what you want, you will always fly.”

Her Private Hell is out in UK cinemas on September 25.