Climax.
(France, 96 minutes - about half of which are just insufferable)
Dir. Gaspar Noé
Starring: Sofia Boutella, Romain Guillermic, Souheila Yacoub, Kiddy Smile
Programme: Midnight Madness (North American premiere)
Master provocateur Gaspar Noé has well earned his status as
a love-him-or-hate-him director. He wears his notoriety like a badge of honour
after 2002’s Irréversible polarized
cinephiles with its real-time rape scene, 2009’s Enter the Void had folks laughing in the aisles with a grand finale
that imagined conception seen from the inside of a character’s cervix, and
2015’s 3D sexapalooza Love shot a bit
too much pleasure in audiences’ faces. Noé’s latest romp Climax is arguably his best film—if only because it isn’t complete insufferable trash. I actually loved nearly 30 minutes of it, which is more than I can say for the rest of Noé's filmography combined.
The dance party that begins the film, however, is a
full-blown riot. The first 30 minutes of Climax
might be the most impressive and technically accomplished work of Noé’s career.
The film watches the young dancers rehearse their latest number as the camera
captures them from spectacular vantage points. Even before the acid kicks in, Climax is a head-trip as the camera
cranes around the dance floor like an all-seeing eye. The gyrations, twerks,
crunches, and twirls have a hypnotic thrill as the camera dances to the beat
with the ensemble.
Filmed with a diverse cast of mostly non-actors drawn from
dance clubs and YouTube channels, along with Kingsman’s Sofia Boutella, Climax
has an energetic and intoxicating ensemble. By the end of the film’s first act,
one’s pulse will be racing. It’s a complete high.
Things are fun for a while when the kids put their drinks up
and unwind, but as Climax descends
into nightmarish mayhem, Noé’s dark side emerges and the film devolves into the
same tiresome misogyny that makes his work so tawdry. The film is gratuitously
violent as the drugs bring out the worst in the dancers. It brings out the
worst in Noé, too, since the characters who are subject to the cruelest pain
are women, people of colour, and queer dancers. There is something just so off
putting and repugnant to all this misery.
Climax is
undeniably the work of a master filmmaker. But it’s also solid proof that the
rule of the auteur needs to go. Only someone as ballsy and defiant as Noé would
even try to pull it off, yet Climax
could have been a much better film had someone in the production had the sense
of stand up to Noé’s instance to push the envelope so gratuitously far. The
film’s a riot for about half an hour, and then it becomes insanely outrageous,
provocative, and off-the-wall bonkers, if only for the sake of it. Climax might be the wildest
booze-fuelled party Noé has ever thrown, but the hangover is so torturous that
it might be the bender that helps one kick him for good.