Gaspar Noé
Climax

Based on a true story.

In 1996, in France, 20 young dancers gather for a three-day rehearsal in a disused boarding school.

They dance amazingly, let loose, party with sangria but someone puts LSD in it, just like that.

An ambitious, chaotic, and anarchic film only in appearance, in reality with a solid structure, shot entirely in chronological order, with an undefined storyline and dialogue line. Absolute freedom for the actors who are not actors, they are real professional dancers, brilliant and unruly.

Climax openly pays homage to Possession by Zulawski (the lysergic possession scenes of the dancers) and Suspiria by Dario Argento (the red tint that has become legendary).

The construction of the film is interesting, divided into three parts. In the long prologue, we watch interviews with the young dancers, just to introduce and define them, but we won't get much out of it. We see them through a TV, with various VHS tapes on the side, including those of Possession and Suspiria (hence the previous openly).

In the second part, the young people dance and go wild trying their choreographies in a frantic flurry of hands and bodies with crazy movements to the notes of Daft Punk (who launched their first album in '96).

In the third part, the young people feel “strange,” did someone put something in the sangria? Definitely yes.

Thus begins the mass psychotropic delirium, even Noé's camera seems out of control in the sequence shots where it literally follows the various protagonists (though there's not a single main character) in their escapes towards freedom (or from themselves), through sinister corridors and locked doors, among truly infernal dances and disjointed dialogues, where violence explodes by inventing pretexts.

In this destructive and lacerating magma, Noé, however, firmly holds the helm in the stormy sea even though the shots become increasingly wavy and overturned (some might say “functional”… well yes, they work).

There is no subtext, what you see is what it is, yet above or alongside Climax, if you prefer, our director inserts tidbits of macro-topics such as birth, motherhood, abortion, and death. These inserts are, in their way, "epitaphs" that appear as captions.

Being born is a unique opportunity.

Dying is an extraordinary experience.

Put a group of young people in an isolated and shabby location, add drugs, and destruction is served.

Noé has shown us the circle of drug-addled madmen, and I wouldn't want to end up there.