The 3 titles presented at TIFF (enter the void, vortex and irreversible, chronological version) are enough to penetrate the mind of a great provocative filmmaker. But beyond shock and controversy, is there enough substance in Gaspar Noé's films?
The cinematographer’s works can be defined as intensely synesthetic, due to their visual and musical power. By the way, they involve the senses of the spectator, they are able to transport anyone into a metaphysical world, a hybrid between dream and reality. Because of this peculiarity, Noé is not a filmmaker for everyone: You either love him or you hate him.
However, the work of the French-Argentine filmmaker is not limited to drawing the oniric perspectives of a banal reality, but always tries to break a predetermined pattern and provoke the viewer, addressing abruptly themes such as sex, drugs, death and madness.
The director has a reputation for being one of the most controversial filmmakers of his generation and is often misunderstood and labeled as an instigator. But ever since Enter the Void (2009), an exemplary techno-hallucinatory trip, inspired by the Tibetan Book of the Dead, he has actually pursued a coherent discourse: The observation of nothingness, of emptiness. Nothing that, in the contemporary era, has turned into everything.
Noé’s film worlds are filled with people who, in search of ecstatic States, descend to abominable levels. The depths in which the French director sinks his characters are usually fueled by drugs and sex, bathed in neon shades and characterized by a frantic shooting that plunges in, around, under and above his subjects.
His films can test the limits of even his most passionate fans. But in Vortex, the transgender filmmaker makes perhaps his most subversive move yet: He creates a quiet, compassionate, and ultimately devastating film about the twilight existence of an elderly couple. But even if it is deaf, it is also a visceral experience.
Articol scris de Anca Grădinariu