Remember, Irreversible, Enter the Void, Love, so many nervous, raw, violent films, some of which caused a scandal. But now 57 years old, and 20 years later IrreversibleGaspar Noé has changed, he is calmer, calmer, and after personal events such as health concerns, he wanted to talk about something else, in this case the end of life, old age and illness.
Obviously, on paper, this does not promise a frankly funny film, but Vortex is nevertheless a magnificent film, which precisely chooses to show old age, its daily life, its rawness, what it means to lose one’s memory, and little by little, to lose one’s head, to be fragile, things that one sees too much rarely in the cinema:
“It’s true that it’s a very, very hard experience, and people are never really prepared. There are some who know about the war, young illness, depression, drugs, there are plenty of subjects which are scary. But old age strikes almost everyone.”
Gaspard Noé, filmmakerat franceinfo
“And maybe that’s because it’s a subject that’s rooted in human experience, continues the director, that people don’t like to see that represented on a screen. We’d rather see horror movies with monsters that drag us into underworlds than see age-related decay, because that’s definitely what’s going to happen to us.”
The director is very well helped here by his three actors, all very accurate and even breathtaking, the Italian director Dario Argento and Françoise Lebrun, memorable actress of The Mom and the Whore by Jean Eustache in 1973, in the roles of this elderly Parisian bourgeois couple, and Alex Lutz who plays their only drug addict son.
And as often with Gaspard Noé, the screenplay took up three pages, and almost all the dialogues were improvised, which did not prevent Françoise Lebrun from learning a lot about Alzheimer’s disease:
“I don’t have a family heritage with Alzheimer’s, so I didn’t have a concrete reference. I watched all the documentaries I could find. And I said to myself that it was very difficult to To be fair with all of this, there is no instruction manual, there is no one form of Alzheimer’s. Each person develops their own degeneration. There are those who run away all the time, break things, etc. So you have to invent.”
Note also the use of the “split screen” technique which here separates the screen in two for the entire duration of the film, and allows you to focus on two characters at the same time in a different place, which gives the like watching two movies in one.
Another outing of the week: Let’s go childrena documentary of which franceinfo is a partner, which focuses on the experience of the Lycée Turgot, in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris, which welcomes students from other establishments, and in particular from the suburbs, in any case from working-class neighborhoods, to decompartmentalize and try to achieve a real academic and social mix, via dance and via a “hip-hop” section.
110 minutes long, the film takes its time and that’s good, alternating dance scenes and exchanges between the students and the hierarchy of the establishment. And a film that could also have been called “La déter”, a slang word and abbreviation of determination.
One of the two directors, Alban Teurlai, was the guest of franceinfo this week:
“The ‘deter’ is the gnaque, the desire is the desire, it’s the will. There is a lot of talk about the ‘battles’ in the film, this moment when the dancers put themselves in a circle, to challenge yourself solo or in teams. The ‘battle’ is a kind of analogy of what these children will face later in life, so we learn to look the adversary in the eye, to greet him, to respect him, we also learn loyalty and not to not let it go too.”
Finally two more tips in brief. We were talking about Alex Lutz, know that he plays in a second film released this week, In the shadow of the girls, directed by Étienne Comar, in which he plays a singing teacher who has lost his voice and gives lessons in prison. Agnès Jaoui and Hafsia Herzi complete the cast.
See also To Chiaraby the Italian Jonas Carpignano, about a teenager whose family is confronted with the Mafia in Calabria, with there also remarkable actors.