French dancers gather in a remote, empty school building to rehearse on a wintry night. The all-night celebration morphs into a hallucinatory nightmare when they learn their sangria is laced with LSD.
With “Climax,” French writer/director Gaspar Noé, the enfant terrible of contemporary cinema, delivers yet another psycho-trip, a descent into psychedelic madness akin to the recent “Mother” (read my review here), which ruptured audiences’ perception of traditional narrative structure, consequently infuriating most. Like Darren Aronofsky’s highly divisive exercise in organized chaos, Noé’s visual trip is not for the faint-of-heart and is likely to leave as many folks scratching their heads as those admiring its visual artistry and radical approach to filmmaking. It may not be as deep as “Mother” or open to as many interpretations, but it’s equally explosive. Love it or hate it, “Climax” is impossible to ignore.
Unlike Noé’s “Irreversible,” where chaos (both visual and thematic) gradually morphs (backward) into serenity, “Climax” has a more traditional approach of beginning with static shots, then slowly deteriorating into celluloid dementia. Come to think of it, this may be the filmmaker’s most accessible film yet – which is not to say he’s going to be getting calls from Marvel anytime soon. All of his trademark elements – extremely graphic sex and violence, dizzying camerawork, hallucinatory neon visuals, and a dark electronic score – are all present. It’s just that this time, unlike, say, “Love,” wherein Noé basically gave us sterilized pornography under the pretense of some insightful human rumination (see my review here), “Climax” is coated with a thick blanket of melancholy, acerbity and, yes, subliminal beauty. Not bad from a guy whose most memorable sequence may still be that of a man getting his face graphically bashed in by a fire hydrant.
Sofia Boutella leads the colorful cast of characters as Selva, one of the dancers that gather in an empty school building to party one cold winter night. Though Noé lets his cast talk, in a montage-like sequence, they don’t reveal much, except for their fondness of sex and who wants to bone whom and how. And then the startling dance sequences start, the director letting his actors flex their chops – and believe me, chops are flexed, as limbs are stretched at impossible angles to energetic beats from the likes of Daft Punk and Aphex Twin. Halfway through the party, Selva discovers that the sangria everyone’s been consuming has been spiked with LSD – and from here on out, things spiral out of control. Let’s just say, people die, fuck, dance frenziedly – oh, and a child gets locked in a dank electric dungeon.
Noé, it seems, still has some hope for beauty in our decaying culture. The vibrancy of the earlier dance scenes, the quiet affection with which he regards his flawed characters, and the sadness and ferocity with which he condemns them all are palpable. Art still exists in our world, yet it is savagely consumed by greed and self-indulgence, phantasmagorically self-destructing in the process – just like “Climax”’s stellar dance sequences become improvised ballets of murder and dementia. I may be sick, but I even found darkly satirical humor in the way Noé shamelessly thrashes the very thing he himself built up.
By turns ugly, juvenile, highly dynamic, transcendent, visually stunning and disorienting, “Climax” is Gaspar Noé all the way. “Life is a collective impossibility,” a title card proclaims towards the end of the film. If you find a modicum of profundity – or cynicism – in that statement, and you’re not prone to seizures, then “Climax” may just find your G-spot.
In select theaters Friday, March 1st
