Vortex (2022)

Direction: Gaspar Noé
Country: France 

Argentinian-born, Paris-based helmer Gaspar Noé, whose work has been anything but predictable (Irreversible, 2002; Enter the Void, 2009), signs a killing drama centered on an elderly couple whose life becomes wrecked by a common neurodegenerative disease. In the end, we are unlikely to forget them. 

Dario Argento, the director of Suspiria (1977) and Tenebre (1982), accepted his first leading role as an actor, embodying Lui, an 80-year-old Italian-born screenwriter with heart problems who is working on a book about cinema and dreams. His psychiatrist wife, Elle (Françoise Lebrun who shone in the epic 1973 French romantic drama The Mother and the Whore), four years younger than him, suffers from advanced dementia and her memory declines precipitously each day that passes. Despite the nearly inexistent help, he refuses to leave their Parisian apartment. From time to time, they have a visit from their son, Stephane (Alex Lutz), a single parent and drug addict in recovery who doesn’t even feel strong enough to take care of himself. At this complicated phase of their lives, his father intently says: “we are all slaves to drugs”.

The film is presented in split-screen mode, capturing the daily routines and specific incidents of the characters. It works both visually and narratively, conveying a precise notion of space and allowing us to understand the protagonists and better relate to them. Yet, the whole film pulses with disenchantment. 

Coercing us to face the sad reality of his story, Noé has never been so poignant and mature. This time he spares us to any artistic pose or psychedelic bullshit and strikes with the devastating realism of memory loss, aging, addiction, and the end of life. It’s his most personal work to date, inspired by the death of his mother and his own life-threatening experience (hemorrhage of the brain). While dealing with the gloomy aspect of the subject, this demanding, depressing, and moving film shows an atrocious lucidity.

Lux Aeterna (2020)

Direction: Gaspar Noé
Country: France

The Argentine-born Paris-based helmer Gaspar Noé is a known shocker who likes to draw attention to himself through a so called ‘originality’ that never truly convinced me. If his early work - I Stand Alone (1998); Irreversible (2002); Enter the Void (2009) - was marked with a painful grittiness that got me involved, then the last two features - Love (2015) and Climax (2018) - were exhaustingly egotist and too ridiculous to deserve any merit. His new outing, Lux Aeterna, is a 51-minute ride into the backstage of a film about witches, in which actresses Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist; Melancholia) and Béatrice Dalle (Betty Blue; Time of the Wolf) play bizarre versions of themselves. The more relaxed posture and discreet demeanors of the former contrasts with the off-center, confrontational and emotionally fake personality of the latter.

The film, funded and co-produced by Saint Laurent’s creative designer Anthony Vaccarello, starts with a droll, casual conversation between the protagonists before slips into a frantic work environment presented with busy split screens and populated by misguided and unsatisfied extras, a treacherous producer, an irritable director, a presumptuous cinematographer, and obnoxious outsiders who don’t respect anyone in the set. At this point, I was very much amused with the unprofessional, tense and maniacal ambiance depicted, as well as the set decoration by Samantha Benne.

Unfortunately, Noé resolved to explore a nihilistic avant-garde territory in the film’s last section, which culminates with pointless neon-soaked flashing visuals, an ominous score, and a general sense of cheap paranoia.

Lux Aeterna is a shamefully underdeveloped charade whose  uncomfortable viewing says absolutely nothing relevant in the end, apart from those quotations from directors such as Dreyer, Fassbinder and Godard.

Climax (2019)

Direction: Gaspar Noé
Country: France

Provocative French-Argentine helmer Gaspar Noé continues to show an alarming inability to write interesting or intelligent stories. Like in other previous polemic moves such as Irreversible (2002) and Love (2015), the only goal in Climax is to unconditionally shock, no matter how. Hence, this time he gathered a group of professional dancers, coming from different backgrounds, to rehearse in an abandoned school and embark on a party turned into unplanned LSD trip that quickly falls out of control. Be aware that this diabolical nightmare can upset sensitive stomachs and induce severe aches in weak heads. It’s all very artsy, though.

The necessity to call attention to himself starts right away when the final credits are exhibited at the beginning of the film, a prank that complies with the unnatural developments that come next. Human decadence and degradation are portrayed with the assistance of a palette drenched in super saturated colors, potentiating the hallucinatory vibes induced by images and music. Up in the first place, the protracted dancing scenes are just there to distract us. They are time-consuming, giving us some time to prepare ourselves for the repulsive avalanche of happenings that serve Noé’s darkest pleasures.

The plot is shallow, assembled with no curves ahead. It’s an abhorrent cocktail of cruelty, violence, paranoia, sadism, unbridled libido, racism, abortion, sexism, suicide, hysteria, and incest. There is a vague allusion to a flag connected to a sect and regular black screens with pseudo-illuminating thoughts like: ‘life is a collective impossibility’ or ‘death is an extraordinary experience’. Genius!

The positive aspects of the film are limited to the eclectic soundtrack and the intrepid camerawork, suffused with oblique and high-angle shots as well as spinning movements meant to daze and confuse.

Insidiously vicious, Climax requires patience, a resistant stomach, an all-embracing sense of humor to deal with the nonsense, and lots of tolerance toward its intellectual emptiness.