Tropico

Lana Del Rey made a short film called Tropico. Thirty minutes. She cast herself as Eve—the whole biblical narrative thing—and wrote the script. The story runs through three chapters from the Garden of Eden to contemporary Los Angeles, which explains itself if you know her sensibility.

Three Paradise album tracks play through it: Body Electric, Gods and Monsters, Bel Air. Supposedly it concludes some larger narrative that started with her Born to Die videos, though I’ve never tracked that particular thread. You don’t really need the connective tissue with Lana’s work.

It’s the kind of project that hovers between genuine ambition and self-aware camp. Biblical mythology filtered through her vision of American imagery and melancholy. I haven’t lived with it long enough to know if it’s brilliant or just confidently made, but with Lana those probably feel identical.