VORTEX
AFTER NEARLY DYING, GASPAR NOÉ FLIPPED HIS FILMMAKING ON ITS HEAD
OUT 20 MAY
Gaspar Noé examines the brutal reality of later-life infirmity.
GASPAR NOÉ IS synonymous with arresting filmmaking: provocative cinema preoccupied with violence, sex and drugs. Irréversible, Enter The Void, Love and Climax are not things you’d want to watch with your parents. Vortex, though, is a U-turn. Almost entirely set in a Parisian apartment, it introduces us to an elderly married couple, a film critic (played by legendary director Dario Argento) with a heart condition and a retired psychiatrist (Françoise Lebrun) with dementia. “It almost looks like a documentary. And it’s a very sad one. People have told me it’s the first movie I’ve made for a more general audience, but they also tell me it’s the most terrifying movie I’ve done,” laughs Noé.