Climax

2018 Gaspar Noe experiment

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A dance group has a party following a rehearsal, but chaos erupts after somebody spikes the sangria.

My relationship with the work of Gaspar Noe can best be described as a love/hate type, but with this one, it's more love despite some things that annoyed me. After a disorienting opening shot that foreshadows a lot of druggy disorientation that will surface later on, you get--as you would only expect in a movie from a director as ornery as Noe--the closing credits and a very strange dedication. Maybe it was that dedication that helped give this a Blair Witch vibe, or maybe I just had Blair Witch on the brain because I was remembering a time when I ran around a farm house naked because I lost a bet to my wife. At the 45-minute mark, we get a bunch of names, the opening credits, I suppose. That seems about the right time for something like that to appear. And just as you'd expect from a Gaspar Noe movie, there's Adidas product placement.

This is described as an "experimental psychedelic dance horror film," and if that sounds like the type of thing you think you would enjoy, I'm pretty sure you would actually enjoy this. It's quickly made, filled with performers who are there for their dancing skills rather than their experiences with acting, and has very little narrative. However, it's so stylish, so well shot, and so vibrant that it's almost impossible not to at least appreciate.

It opens with that pre-closing-credits overhead (drone) shot that I've already mentioned before a series of recorded interviews with the characters that seem to be some sort of audition tapes. It's a long series of those, and you definitely get enough time to scan the titles of VHS tapes to the right. No, there isn't one for The Right Stuff like in a very similar shot at the beginning of Us, but looking at those titles will give you an idea of the type of aesthetic Noe is going for here. From there, you're treated to a long take with this dance, and it's about the most enthralling thing I've seen in a movie in a long time. The dance itself is probably around 7 minutes long, and at one point, I just started laughing because I needed to do something other than sit there with my mouth open. At one point, I wondered if the entire movie was going to at least appear to be one extended take. It's not, but it does end with this seemingly impossible nearly-45-minute long take that I was just mesmerized by. An unsteady camera--not unlike what was going on with the camera in Enter the Void--and loads of arthouse color prove this thing earns the "psychedelic" part of that above movie description. Characters no longer move right, dancers weighed down by some unseen force, and the whole thing makes you very uneasy. You don't know how this will end or maybe even care how it will end, but you know the whole thing is unsettling. In between the long takes, there's an overhead shot featuring more dancing, one moment in particular when four guys have their arms jerking around all over the place that had me giggling again. Another sequence has the characters paired off, and the camera frequently blinks during that part. I didn't think the conversations or any kind of character development during that sequence added much to the movie actually.

The cast is pretty good, mostly because they can all jerk their arms around well, but Sofia Boutella--maybe because she's actually a professional actress--really stands out. She's just great here, truly one of my favorite performances of the year. She can freak-out with the best of them!

This movie is the equivalent of a Yoko Ono song. I mean that as a compliment because I think Yoko Ono is great.