Wer Gaspar Noé und Dario Argento auf dem Poster von VORTEX lesen wird, wird sofort die seltsamsten Gedankenspiele haben, was da wohl für ein Film herauskommen könnte. Tatsächlich überrascht Noé wieder einmal mit seinem Film auf eine Art und Weise, die vollkommen unerwartet kommt, denn eine solch lebensnahe Geschichte mit vollkommener Bodenständigkeit in der Erzählweise, einem extrem ruhigen Pacing und hervorragenden Schauspielenden, passt absolut gar nicht in das übliche Repertoire des Ausnahmeregisseurs. VORTEX ist kein großes Filmhighlight und dauert zudem auch viel zu lange, besticht aber durch seine bitterernste Ehrlichkeit und einer filmischen Inszenierung, die ich so noch nicht zuvor gesehen habe. Eine Sichtungsempfehlung möchte ich hiermit abgeben, aber dennoch darauf aufmerksam machen, dass die Erwartungen niedrig gehalten werden sollten und Liebhabende seiner sonstigen Filme womöglich nicht auf ihre Kosten kommen.

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Vortex ©2022 Rapid Eye Movies

Vortex ©2022 Rapid Eye Movies

The ravages of time hit us all, some harder and some less so. Gaspar Noé is one of the most controversial French filmmakers and has himself recently been confronted several times with the themes of death, illness, suffering and the consequences of ageing. The director watched both his grandparents and his mother closely as they became more and more victims of time and succumbed to natural decay. He himself was also very close to death when he was hospitalised with a stroke and struggled to survive for several weeks. According to his own statements, however, this did not affect the idea of the film VORTEX, which he had already had in mind beforehand. In the realisation, a script was largely dispensed with, and so the famous giallo director Dario Argento and Franҫoise Lebrun as the main characters had to improvise their roles almost completely. On its rather short festival journey, VORTEX managed to convert all Best Film nominations into a corresponding award.

This is what it’s all about

The same daily routine surrounds an old married couple who have been sharing a life together for many years. Their son, who already has a small child of his own, comes to visit them every now and then and tries to take care of them, but it is not so easy. Especially because the wife is struggling with Alzheimer’s and is always somewhere between reality and the dream world with her thoughts. While her husband tries to continue to pursue his profession even at an advanced age and still appears much sprightlier and fitter, the old lady actually needs a carer to help her through everyday life. But her partner refuses, believing that he can still cope with the challenges himself. But again and again unforeseeable events happen that can be traced back to the illness, and it becomes increasingly clear: things cannot go on like this.

Review

Gaspar Noé, who is known for his willingness to experiment and who likes to try to reach the limits of tolerability, once again attracts attention with his latest film. Contrary to other productions, however, this does not stem from blatant sex and violence scenes that cause the audience to flee the auditorium, but this time he relies on a much more subtle and everyday horror that we humans all encounter willy-nilly in the course of our lives. In a film that is far too long, he serves us the bitter drama of old age, which can transform us from highly educated and agile personalities back into seemingly useless and simple-minded children. Stubbornness, ignorance and cockiness are crossed with the desire for self-determination, independence as well as a dignified end to life.

The key element of this film are the two main actors, who knew roughly what was in store for them, but stumbled into a film shoot largely without preparation. The quiet and discreet narrative was shot in a 25-day shoot, which largely dispenses with dramaturgical tips and simply draws on the melodrama of the situation. Both Dario Argento, who is seen here in his first leading role after appearing at most once as a cameo in his own films, and Franҫoise Lebrun, who looks back on a moving film career, do a fabulous job and could hardly play their roles more convincingly. The senility of both characters seems completely genuine and natural and ensures that the audience can always develop associations with their own relatives. In addition, Argento gives us one of the most authentic heart attacks the cinema screen has ever seen.

Splitscreen against loneliness

Moreover, Noé once again breaks with visual conventions in VORTEX. It is already apparent in the first scenes that he relies on extremely striking editing, characterised by black screens that encompass far more than just one frame. Even though the use of cuts is done rather discreetly, the enjoyment of the film might be a little dulled for some who have difficulty flickering lights and strobe lights, as the eyes occasionally get a little triggered. Even more striking, however, is that the entire film is shot in two perspectives, shown side by side in parallel editing. Two different cameras each follow one of the two main characters, ensuring that we always know what the other person is doing at any given moment. The small but existing highlights change from person to person, of course, which is why there is always something happening that arouses curiosity.

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This parallel editing is done by means of two images, each of which fills one half of the entire widescreen and is simultaneously framed like a 35mm print. According to the actors, this type of production caused quite a bit of confusion during the shoot, as it seemed highly technical and involved a lot of effort, particularly because it was necessary to pay attention to which camera was where at which time and which image was being captured. According to Noé himself, only a few scenes were actually supposed to be shot in this style, but as he was still working on the editing during the shoot, he realised that the expressiveness that an entire production in this style could achieve. In particular, it was important to him to show how different even a common life can be. VORTEX thus expands on the approaches already taken in the film DEUX MOI, which, however, focused more on loneliness conditioned by digital isolation.

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The child in me

Noé manages to capture the dreariness of the evening of life excellently and, despite an actually uneventful plot, always keeps the audience’s curiosity with the film. This even goes so far that we viewers ourselves begin to worry about the senior couple and want to take up and fight the cry of helplessness. Sentimentality plays as big a role in VORTEX as the juxtaposition of contrasting personalities. In particular, Noé likes to seek comparisons between children who are not yet able to express themselves independently and therefore look for other ways to draw attention to themselves and old people who now have to struggle with the same problem again. Just as exaggeratedly exhausting as the grandson is at times in this story, the Alzheimer’s disease of Lebrun’s character also presents itself, which can become very unpleasant in its search for attention.

Conclusion

Anyone who will read Gaspar Noé and Dario Argento on the poster of VORTEX will immediately have the strangest thoughts about what kind of film might come out of it. In fact, Noé surprises once again with his film in a way that is completely unexpected, because such a true-to-life story with complete down-to-earthness in the narrative, extremely calm pacing and excellent actors, does not fit at all into the usual repertoire of the exceptional director. VORTEX is not a great film highlight and also lasts far too long, but it captivates with its bitter honesty and a cinematic production that I have never seen before. I would like to recommend a viewing, but I would like to point out that expectations should be kept low and that lovers of his other films may not get their money’s worth.

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