«Climax», the maximum climate

Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival - Jonas Follonier

The year is 1996. The elite of young urban dancers are getting ready to celebrate before going on tour. A small banquet has been prepared. In this banquet, sangria. In this sangria, a something that will turn their heads. All of them, dancers, homosexuals and heterosexuals, drug addicts and cleans, They're about to plunge into a disturbing state. An evening of horror ensues, a nightmare that makes you dizzy and vomit. The director? Gaspar Noé, of course.

After Enter The Void which won the Narcisse for best film at NIFFF in 2010, and the pornographic melodrama Love, presented at the festival in 2015, the enfant terrible of French cinema is back with a new opus on the theme of sex, but this time with dance as the starting point. And dance, ladies and gentlemen, is the order of the day throughout the first half of the film, with the exception of a few high-level «dialogues» featuring oil-free sodomy and deep throat.

It's the second part that sets the scene for the climax, the ultimate point of the degenerate evening - you'd have to be a real pervert to talk about orgasm - where it's all about partying, death and dread. If the aim of Climax is to remind us that sex and violence are linked, it's a success. If the idea of the film is to make us feel the horror of the situation, then it's a masterpiece, because it's a horror of a film. A horror film in its own way, which «oozes creative rage» as NIFFF artistic director Anaïs Emery put it, having been shot in just two weeks. A film, finally, of excess and extremes, which is reflected in its form. A coherent film, then.

Does this make it a «virtuoso film», another expression used during the short presentation before the screening? One thing is certain: Gaspar Noé delivers something unique, something never before seen or produced, as he turns every cinematic code on its head. The camera of Climax throws himself on the floor and moves like the dancers, then gives way to a fixed shot lasting several minutes; names and marks follow one another on the screen for several brackets; a hellish soundtrack crowns the whole. But it's a long way from giving this transgressive, shocking work a standing ovation. Do we really have to give credence to those words heard at the festival urinals: «the film is weird, therefore it's a good film»?

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Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © NIFFF