NEW ROSE HOTEL (film)

NEW ROSE HOTEL. Abel Ferrara, dir., co-script. William Gibson, story, q.v. under Fiction. USA: Edward R. Pressman Film Corp., Quadra Entertainment (prod.) / Rose Releasing Ltd. (US release, and copyright holder), Mondo Films (France), 1998. VHS Release: Sterling. Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Asia Argento, featured players; Walken and Dafoe also co-prod. 093 min.

Very closely follows Gibson's 1980s story, yielding a very near-future noir caper film (and arguably an art film), cyberpunk in terms of plot and corporate politics: the world of the zaibatsus, ca. 2002. Relevance of this film is caught by "Lordwhorfin" on the IMDb: "First, this film is indeed a cyber film. It is subtle, and low key, but the sense of invasive and observational technology"—surveillance in our terms—"is omnipresent. Half the images are reprocessed through secondary or even tertiary cameras. […] This is a film about observations, images, and information. The flashback sequences are X's (Willem Dafoe's) realization that he completely blew the deal, of what he didn't understand (or want to know) in light of his delusions about love. In re-observing his own actions, he replays, with mounting horror, his loss of control." See under Drama Criticism S. Garrett's study of "Videology," and under Background M. Foucault's Discipline and Punish on surveillance in the Panopticon.