Vortex (Gaspar Noé, 2021)

During Christmas 2019, Gaspar Noé's festivities were cut short by a near-fatal brain haemorrhage, from which, happily, he made a full recovery.  Vortex, Noé's first feature film since his hospitalisation, can and will be viewed as both a response to that major life event and a radical shift in tone from the filmmaker.  While each Noé film from Enter the Void on has been notably tamer than its predecessor—and his latest effort is no exception to this trend—Vortex nonetheless delivers the sort of sickening punch familiar to anyone who's experienced Noé's previous work; only with this film, Noé takes the emotional route in order to serve his goal, a strategy that will almost certainly wrongfoot audiences accustomed to the director's visceral approach.  That said, the film has its writer-director's fingerprints all over it, and it could never be mistaken for the work of any other filmmaker; while Vortex sees its director cover new terrain—or at the very least, the same old ground in a novel way—it's always clearly identifiable as a Noé film.   

Vortex chronicles the final days of a nameless elderly couple, played by cinematic legends Françoise Lebrun and Dario Argento (both of whose work was featured among a stack of VHS tapes glimpsed in the opening moments of Noé's Climax).  She's a retired psychiatrist—albeit one who, crucially, can still prescribe medication—while he's a writer currently working on a book about cinema and its relationship to dreams, which is exactly the sort of project one could easily imagine Noé tackling once he reaches retirement age.  Their daily routine, filled as it is with largely aimless pottering, betrays the quiet contentment of two people who have spent decades in one another's company.  Yet illness has begun to define both of their lives: he has a longstanding heart complaint, while she finds herself in the ever-tightening grip of dementia.  As she becomes more prone to erratic behaviour—wandering off without notice, leaving the gas cooker on, flushing her husband's manuscript down the toilet—he becomes irritated and concerned in roughly equal measure.  The couple have a son, recovering drug addict Stéphane (Alex Lutz), who tries his best to help, although he has many other problems to contend with, including trying to stay clean and looking after his own young child.  In a bid to make everyone's life a bit easier, Stéphane urges his parents to consider moving to a retirement home but, rather inevitably, this suggestion is dismissed out of hand.

The bulk of Vortex's already lengthy running time unfolds in split-screen, with each half of the frame devoted to one of the two protagonists; a few years ago, we'd have looked on this effect as just the latest in a long line of gimmicks employed by the ever-mischievous Noé, but here it feels like a truly vital component, one that firmly underlines the isolation experienced by both of the main characters.  In hindsight, it's easy to see how Noé and his regular cinematographer Benoît Debie used the medium-length Lux Æterna, with its liberal use of side-by-side images, as a testing ground for the much more ambitious Vortex, a film that proves quite demanding for the viewer when it comes to selecting what to focus on at any given moment.  As with Lux Æterna, much of what goes on in Vortex isn't particularly consequential, yet the film manages to instil a real sense of anxiety, one that's ultimately justified as the exquisitely desolate story plays out to its conclusion.  Comparisons to Michael Haneke's immaculate Oscar-winner Amour are both obvious and appropriate, but there's something more recognisably human about the jagged, messy Vortex, almost as if Noé is serving as the fire to Haneke's ice.

Vortex boasts two—actually, three—beautifully-judged performances, with veteran filmmaker Argento excelling in what is a very rare turn on the other side of the camera, while Lebrun, still best known for her outstanding performance in Jean Eustache's masterpiece The Mother and the Whore, is note-perfect as the dementia victim for whom the world rapidly becomes a hostile, bewildering environment, with her eyes relaying the terror she experiences once she is no longer able to recognise faces and places.  And while he at no point encroaches on the limelight commanded by the two leads, the superb Lutz manages to make the rather hapless Stéphane a credible, sympathetic presence.  All three of the film's principal characters are caught in the vortex of the title, which sees both memories and tangible, real-world content swept away.  As Brian Molko of Placebo—Noé directed the music video for the band's "Protège-moi"—once sang, "can't stop growing old".  Or, as Noé himself put it with Irreversible's final (or should that be first?) title card, "time destroys all things"; a full 20 years on from that brutal, pitiless film, Gaspar Noé's concerns haven't changed very much—but his approach certainly has.   

Darren Arnold

Images: Wild Bunch

Lux Æterna (Gaspar Noé, 2019)

Amazingly, the last Cannes Film Festival took place way back in 2019, and it was during this edition that Gaspar Noé's Lux Æterna was first unleashed; in September 2020, during a welcome if brief window in which cinemas were permitted to reopen, the film received a theatrical release in France.  For those of us who didn't manage to catch the film on the big screen, it's been an extremely long wait, but last month Lux Æterna began to surface on several VOD platforms; while consuming the film in this manner isn't exactly ideal, your eyeballs will probably thank you by the time you reach the end of the mild-mannered Noé's latest visual assault on audiences.  In all seriousness, Lux Æterna is a film that fully warrants its epilepsy warning, so please keep this in mind before viewing.  When the film received its French premiere, it was preceded by a Noé short titled The Art of Filmmaking, a stroboscopic essay film that is borderline unwatchable, and I do wonder what condition the audience were in when they braced themselves for the main feature. 

Yet to refer to Lux Æterna as a feature is slightly misleading, as it runs to a little over fifty minutes.  Noé initially received funding from Saint Laurent to shoot an advert for the luxury fashion house, but came up with something that was much longer than, and some way from, what was ordered; luckily, YSL were very happy with what their money had been spent on.  Noé actually shot enough footage to make a feature film of typical length, but Lux Æterna's liberal use of split-screen effectively halves the film's runtime.  As such, the film is closer in length to Noé's uncompromising Carne - a work that's now a full thirty years old - than it is to any of his five full-length films from I Stand Alone through Climax.  While the addition of The Art of Filmmaking would have allowed the programme to be classified as a feature film in France, the short isn't included in the version currently streaming, so we are best to consider Lux Æterna to be a medium-length work, albeit one that proves to be way more interesting than many films twice the length.  While its fierce strobe effects prove to be something of an endurance test, Lux Æterna stands as Noé's tamest film (it's all relative), as it eschews both the juddering violence and sexually explicit material we've largely come to expect from his work.

As with every Noé film from 2002's Irreversible on, Lux Æterna features the work of expert cinematographer Benoit Debie, and the brilliant Belgian's work here provides yet further proof of both his extraordinary ability and the essential part he plays in forming Noé's now-trademark aesthetic.  Lux Æterna, like Irreversible - which was recently re-edited into a chronological version that is now available on Blu-ray - culminates in a sensory overload, but at least this time around the audience doesn't face the challenge while still fresh from a pummelling by two of the most brutal sequences in modern mainstream cinema; Lux Æterna, despite instilling the rising sense of unease we've long since come to associate with Noé's films, is at its heart a warm, rather playful affair, one in which all of the cast and crew are credited by just their first names, which stands in sharp contrast to Irreversible's opening (closing?) credits, wherein those on both sides of the camera were coldly, simply denoted by their surnames.  

Lux Æterna is a meta-movie in which actresses Charlotte Gainsbourg and Béatrice Dalle play themselves; Dalle is directing a film about witch trials, and Gainsbourg is the star.  Yet Dalle is faced with many obstacles, ranging from meddling producers to a highly subversive cinematographer, plus there's Karl Glusman, from Noé's 3D movie Love, as a rather desperate type who's apparently flown in from LA just to pitch his new project to the put-upon Gainsbourg.  For the climactic witch-burning scene of Dalle's film, models Abbey Lee and Mica Argañaraz flank Gainsbourg as the three are tied to stakes in front of a green screen.  But a strange lighting glitch occurs, and Lux Æterna winds to its fiery conclusion via a full-bore RGB nightmare.  These closing moments are really the film's raison d'être, and they deliver exactly what we've come to expect from Noé, which is a real experience; he's a filmmaker who's always determined to evoke a visceral response from his audience.  While Noé always appears chiefly interested in what his viewers think - or, more accurately, feel - when they're caught up in watching his work, his prior films are all extremely memorable, and the infernal, invigorating Lux Æterna, in which Noé delivers his thrills with typical aplomb, is thankfully no different.

Darren Arnold

Images: UFO Distribution

The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard, 2018)

It can often be rather worrying when an established director makes a film in a foreign language for the first time, but the stakes seem especially high when the filmmaker in question is arguably the greatest director working today.  It's fair to say that Jacques Audiard's stunning run from Read My Lips through Dheepan has cemented his place as one of the true greats - a director who rarely seems to put a foot out of place.  Audiard had much to risk by stepping out of his comfort zone to make a film in English; his prior work was always highly nuanced, and filmmakers working in another tongue can often pass over the subtleties of that language.  Happily - and possibly surprisingly - Audiard comes up trumps with The Sisters Brothers, a terrific western that can proudly sit alongside his other works such as Rust and Bone and A Prophet.  The film's quality is evident from the off, and any doubts we may have had are quickly extinguished.

Set in the unforgiving Oregon of the 1850s, the film follows hitmen brothers Charlie and Eli (Joaquin Phoenix, John C. Reilly) as they carry out the bidding of a wealthy Commodore (Rutger Hauer).  As gunfighters, the brothers prove to be as good as anyone around, and even when the pair are outnumbered, they're never outgunned.  Eli is the more sensitive of the two, while Charlie regularly drowns his own demons in alcohol, which often leaves him in no condition to ride - although it seems that little can blunt his fighting skills.  The Commodore sends the two to hunt down Warm (Riz Ahmed), a timid and sickly-looking gent on his way to California with the Gold Rush.  Taking no chances, the Commodore has also hired Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal), a private detective who locates and befriends Warm; Morris grows uneasy at the thought of the grisly end which awaits Warm when the Sisters catch up him, and he and the would-be prospector set out for California together.  With this complication in place, the Sisters find themselves on the trail of both Warm and Morris.

When the two parties eventually come face to face, Audiard brilliantly wrong-foots us and the story takes an unexpected turn.  To detail it here would be to say a little too much, but suffice to say that Warm has been working on a formula for locating gold, and this becomes central to the fates of all four men.  This development comes as part of a whole which feels at once fresh and familiar; Audiard and his trusted co-writer Thomas Bidegain, not for the first time, have created a world in which there's a perfect balance of light and shade.  It is fair to say that the way you view each of the four main characters will change - probably more than once - over the course of the film's running time.  All of this is captured magnificently by the great Belgian cinematographer Benoit Debîe, who recently lensed Gaspar Noé's Climax; Debie makes a major contribution when it comes to putting us in the thick of lawless, dusty 19th century America (although the film was actually shot in Spain).  There are few cinematographers whose work is worth viewing regardless of the director they're teamed with, but Debie's sterling efforts are always worth seeking out; all the better when he links up with the likes of Noé and Audiard.

The Sisters Brothers is adapted from a novel by Canadian author Patrick deWitt, who wrote the screenplay for Terri, which coincidentally also starred John C. Reilly - who's on double duty for The Sisters Brothers, with the actor also taking on the role of producer (alongside Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, no less).  You can see the appeal of the story to Audiard: criminals feature prominently in all of his films (bar A Self-Made Hero), and the same concerns are prevalent here - even if the milieu marks new territory for the director.  A recurrent theme in Audiard's work - of the man who tries to turn away from a life of crime - is also present in The Sisters Brothers.  So, the essence of the film actually isn't so different from what we have come to expect from Jacques Audiard, even if the packaging is unfamiliar.  What is noticeably different this time around is that Audiard pushes more characters to the forefront; usually, his films focus almost exclusively on one or two people, but here he manages to spread the load among the four main characters and, remarkably, they are all equally fascinating.  As such, it's something of an ensemble piece, one which features a quartet of actors on top form.  Whether Audiard ventures into English-language filmmaking again remains to be seen, but what isn't in any doubt is that The Sisters Brothers is a must-see film of tremendous quality.

Darren Arnold

Images: UniFrance

Climax (Gaspar Noé, 2018)

During the past 20 years, Gaspar Noé has made just five feature films.  Climax - which has recently been released on DVD and Blu-ray - appeared after the shortest gap in his filmography, following his 2015 3D feature Love.  The list of people you could share a Noé film with is as short as the director's résumé, as his works are never an easy watch.  That said, both Love and Climax have marked a relative mellowing, of sorts, for the director; coincidentally or not, these films are the only two to be made by Noé since he turned 50.  Yet, if these works can indeed be said to be tamer, it says more about the films that came before (most notably 2002's Irreversible), and Noé's work, even at its most palatable, is not for the faint of heart.  I once attended a screening of his Enter the Void which was introduced by the director, and was struck by how affable, funny and charming he was.  If you met this guy in the street, you'd never believe he was the man behind some of the most black-hearted cinema we've ever seen.

Climax, which stars the excellent Sofia Boutella, is a film of two very distinct halves.  Near the beginning we are presented with the full credits, along with a reference to the film we've just seen.  Hang on, is this story going to be told backwards, à la Irreversible?  Not really, although we do see part of the ending at the beginning, making the bulk of the film, quite appropriately as it turns out, one big flashback.  For the first main section, we're privy to a dance troupe's final rehearsal before they're due to head off on tour.  We witness them performing their energetic routine, and even if, like me, you have no interest in dance, you are very unlikely to be left unimpressed by this incredible extended sequence as various voguers, waackers and krumpers all do their thing in front of Noé's camera.  That this is all done in a solitary take makes it all the more remarkable - for decades, we've grown tired of cinema's tricks and CGI, but to watch this group perform like this with no edits of any kind is refreshing in a way that's hard to describe; it almost makes you feel as if a reset button has been pressed and cinema has got its mojo back.  It's pure bravura filmmaking, and certainly the most exhilarating dance sequence I've ever seen on film.

Following these exertions, it's time for a party to mark the end of the intensive rehearsal period.  The dancers break off into couples, and we get to eavesdrop on the various conversations, which almost invariably involve bitching about other members of the troupe.  Noé breaks from his one-take approach here, and dips in and out of the different discussions in a fidgety manner.  None of the dialogue is particularly consequential, but it does give each of the characters a little more room to establish their personalities (prior to this, we've just seen fragments of recorded interviews with each member).  After this pause for breath, there's another exciting, prolonged dance sequence, this time focusing on the dancers' individual talents; as before, Noé chronicles this with an unblinking eye, although this time around it's from an overhead vantage point.  And then, most surprisingly, another set of credits appears - which serves as a line dividing the film's two very different parts.  Noé's debut feature, I Stand Alone, contained an on-screen warning which gave you 30 seconds to abandon the cinema before the film really plummeted into the cesspool.  Climax's mid-film credits could be similarly viewed as a warning, albeit of the coded variety - after all, don't we normally leave once the second lot of credits roll?  Indeed, one person at the screening I attended adhered to this protocol.

If you choose to keep watching, you'd best buckle up.  As part of the celebrations, the majority of the dancers have been swigging sangria, and it soon transpires that someone has spiked the bowl.  It doesn't take long for the troupe to realise what has happened, and accusations soon fly.  Who's behind this scarcely matters (although watch carefully and you'll spot the perp), as the dancers are now powerless in the grip of a highly potent hallucinogen.  While we can't see what they see, we are still presented with something resembling a waking nightmare in which all hell breaks loose; in case we're in any doubt about this, the last stretch of the film sees the camera flipped upside down as the chaos unfolds against suitably infernal red emergency lighting.  This post-credits section is arguably the lesser half of the film; it's remarkable in that it all appears to be filmed in a single take (although some very clever edits are more likely), but anyone familiar with Noé's work will be presented with something which looks slightly reheated.  Which doesn't stop it from being uncomfortably compelling - the film is many things, but being dull is never one of them.

Climax doesn't really show too many signs of progress as far Noé's career is concerned, but it does reinforce his position as a filmmaker of incomparable, fizzing technique; few directors have mastered sound and image in the way that Noé has and, just as with with his previous four features, Climax is a technical marvel.  It also has Noé's fingerprints all over it, in everything from Benoît Debie's outstanding cinematography to the trademark Godardian intertitles.  What's all the more remarkable is that the whole thing was put together in a matter of weeks; working without a script, Noé started the film in early 2018 and had it ready for screening at the same year's Cannes in May.  That's a quick turnaround for any film, let alone one as dizzying and dazzling as Climax.  While it's not a film that can be recommended unreservedly, it's certainly one to carefully consider should you find yourself jaded with present-day narrative cinema. 

Darren Arnold

Images: Wild Bunch