CLIMAX – Review

A tripped-out horror musical, CLIMAX is the latest descent into hallucinatory madness From French writer/director Gaspar Noé, the bad boy of modern French cinema. Though not his most explicit work, all of Noé’s trademark elements – over-the-top graphic sex and violence, dizzying camerawork, psychedelic neon visuals, and dark electronic music – are on display in CLIMAX.

Sofia Boutella, the sole actual actress in the film, (the rest are professional dancers – and there’s one bratty child) leads the multi-ethnic cast of characters as Selva, one of about twenty young revelers who gather in a dark abandoned building to party and dance one cold winter night. With the exception of an opening shot of someone injured and disoriented in blinding snow, the first 30 minutes of CLIMAX is relatively playful, resembling little more than a French entry in the STEP UP series. Noé has his cast introduce themselves in  ‘audition tapes’,  shown montage-like on a vintage television set (the story is allegedly a true one set in the mid-90s) on a shelf next to a stack of clamshell VHS cases of Noe’s favorite cult  films (POSSESSION, SUSPIRIA, ERASERHEAD). They mostly speak about their love of their profession, their travels, and their dreams. After several minutes of this, everyone starts dancing. This is a startling, virtuosic single-take sequence as the director lets his dancer/actors strut their impressive stuff.  For 15 unbroken minutes, this pack of talent gyrates, flexes, contorts, and writhes, with arms and legs bent at abstract, impossible angles, all to the propulsive, throbbing tempos of 90s techno club bands. It’s an eye-popping sequence presented brilliantly, with youth, vigor and passion. Noé then gives us, in a too-long sequence of two-shots, more talking heads with a series of revealing, rambling conversations in which the performers gossip, backbite one another and reveal who they want to sleep with. One eventually declares “I’m ready for some crazy shit”, which is the first clue to the Hell that is about to descend on their party. It’s discovered that the sangria everyone’s been imbibing has been spiked with LSD – and from here on out, events spiral out of control. There’s a second dance sequence, this one shot from above, where the audience observes that the hallucinogenic has begun to kick in.

(Spoiler alert) These kids must have taken that ‘brown acid’ we’ve always been warned about, because everyone has a bad trip. The third act of CLIMAX  devolves into an orgy of screaming, vomiting, screwing, urinating, physical and sexual assault, incest, contorting, bone-breaking, murder and other spectacles of horror and debauchery that the audience glimpses among the flashing strobe lights. Noé’s often queasy camerawork plummets, glides, and soars, flips 180 degrees and bathes the depravity in a red light. It’s a grim spectacle likely to leave as many viewers scratching their heads as those admiring Noé’s visual style. Some may find the director’s overly-artsy, devilish provocateur schtick tiresome, and they would have a point. I have no idea why the end credits appear at the film’s start, the main credits appear at the halfway point, and the title is revealed at the very end, but they do. It all goes on a bit too long before CLIMAX finally reaches its climax and its overall unpleasantness is upped by that child (also dosed on LSD) who spends much of the film locked in a dangerous room screaming for his mommy. Audiences are unlikely to be dancing up the theater aisles when it’s over, but I do recommend CLIMAX for adventurous filmgoers.

4 of 5 Stars

CLIMAX opens in St. Louis March 14th exclusively at Landmark’s The Tivoli Theater