Mark Reviews Movies: CLIMAX

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 8, 2019

Deciding where to begin with Climax, writer/director Gaspar Noé's latest indulgence in off-putting excess, is difficult. That's not simply because Noé himself seems uncertain about where to begin his movie.

It does begin with the usual company logos, which is a detail that, right now, might seem unnecessary to note, but there is a point to mentioning it. The first image is an overhead shot of a woman stumbling through some pure snow. She falls over at one point, and that's when we notice the blood, which is covering her face and body, spilling out onto the whiteness. She lets out some howls of anguish and proceeds to crawl forward. The camera moves, and there's a nifty edit that switches to an upward perspective. Then, the end credits start to roll.

The movie isn't finished, obviously, but the filmmaker does treat the beginning as the ending, because, well, it is technically the ending of this story. Some text speaks about how the movie was based upon a true event that occurred in 1996. Yes, the text is in the past tense, since, after all, this is the finale, meaning that, from the movie's perspective, we've already watched it. To be frank, after seeing the rest of the movie, that single, opening shot does provide a pretty basic summary of everything that unfolds after—well, before—it.

Some might be feeling a sense of déjà vu, because Noé already has done this reverse-order trick in one of his previous movies. Here, though, we don't get the full credits. The main ones—the cast, with their names in different typefaces, and filmmakers, who have symbols denoting their jobs instead of written titles, along with the music artists who provide the soundtrack—play out after this prologue.

There's also another prologue (in which the main characters, on a tube TV surrounded by VHS tapes and books, give interviews about why they want to join the dance school where the story takes place), a lengthy dance sequence, and a longer montage of the main characters gossiping amongst themselves. Noé even runs through all of the company logos again before those credits—and before announcing that this is "a French film and proud of it."

There are and, perhaps, always have been two ways of looking at Noé's particular way of making movies. The outlook is entirely dependent upon whether one looks at his style of excesses as something to be admired—or even worthy of being embraced—or something that is simply bolstering storytelling that begins with one or two decent ideas, only to drag out those thoughts with hollow repetitiveness.

Even from the perspective of someone who's in that second camp, there is something slightly different about this movie. From the start, when Noé repeats the most famous bit from what is probably his most (in)famous movie, there's a certain knowing, winking sense of humor here. That humor, like the movie itself, is stopped dead in its tracks by the character introductions, but that's followed by the dance number, which is astonishing for the choreography, the physicality of the performers, and Noé's retrained and complete control of his camera, which moves back and forth along a single plane in order to capture each solo performance and the ways these dancers come together as a group.

The dance simultaneously feels perfectly orchestrated and spontaneous, and once the barebones plot is set in motion (after the gossiping and yet another dance number, shot from a far less satisfying overhead angle), Noé brings that same feeling to his storytelling. Basically, this is the story of what happens when these dancers drink from alcoholic punch, which only one of them is aware has been spiked with LSD. As one might expect, it does not turn out pleasantly.

The dancers are a diverse bunch, except that they all seem to share a degree of selfishness. One could accuse Noé of setting up these characters in this scenario simply as a way to punish them, and it might be safe to assume that the filmmaker would nod and chuckle at that accusation.

Some of them stand out but only in terms of focus. Selva (Sofia Boutella) becomes the main protagonist for a decent stretch of the chaos, as she wanders the school's halls undergoing a range of drug-induced emotions. David (Romain Guillermic) is the resident Casanova, who claims to have slept with all of the women in class, and his libido gets him into some trouble when, proving that he's exaggerating, he hits on one them. Gazelle (Giselle Palmer) and Taylor (Taylor Kastle) are a brother and sister whose relationship moves into uncomfortable terrain. Emmanuelle (Claude Gajan Maull) is the teacher, whose young son Tito (Vince Galliot Cumant) is, quite accurately, predicted to be doomed from his initial appearance.

It's cruel, to be sure, and, at times, viciously funny. Climax is also, as is to be expected from Noé at this point, a single idea—of how the simple, intentional, and external amplification of our worst selves is the only thing needed for complete social collapse—repeated over and over until the effect is numbing.

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