IN THEATRES: CLIMAX!!!

Yes, I watched it again.

Words cannot even begin to describe my feelings toward this movie. I love it, I am repulsed by it, I am completely hypnotised by it. The movie gods decided to allow a second screening in Auckland and I went along to have my noggin re-pulverised.

Watching Climax for the second time, I really appreciated how brutally simple it is: a group of people gather in an isolated location. Something insidious infects the group and soon they lose any sense of social compact.

With its narrative simplicity, archetypal characters and emphasis on visual style, the film feels like a descendant of 70s alt-genre freak-outs like Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981). Sofia Boutella’s protracted breakdown feels like a homage to Isabella Adjani’s  berserk explosion in that film.

Though set in 1996, the movie evokes the style and atmosphere of Euro-horror circa 1977-1981: One of the opening shots is framed by old VHS covers for Possession, Suspiria and other films from the same period.

As Noe’s camera tracks and prowls after his cast, I was reminded of Angst (Gerald Kargl, 1983), the film Noe has claimed as one of his chief inspirations as a filmmaker. There is something very similar going on in terms of the unity of a simple story & a hyper-real visual style: Angst is about a murderer who is released from prison and commits a home invasion on a family - like Climax, it’s an unrelentingly from story told in extended long takes, which are either too intimate or isolating. 

The viewer is meant to feel helpless, both immersed and distanced from the action: Unflinching long takes, Dutch angles and the cramped setting all combine to make the film feel like a literal nightmare.

On this viewing, I found it interesting how - at the outset -the visual style feels perfect for capturing the troupe’s choreography. As the film progresses, Noe deploys the visual vocabulary he has established at the beginning to document the dancers disintegration from rehearsed performance of ecstasy to states of panic, desire, rage and terror. 

Rules and norms become meaningless. Violence, death, sex, dance become as one.

There is a moment I referenced in my initial review in a which an injured woman crumpled on the ground looks straight up at the camera hovering directly over her and screams for someone to cal an ambulance.

It is a horrific moment, both drawing attention to the voyeurism of Noe’s camera and our own position as viewers. 

There is a sense that Ot feels like the film is trying to agitate the viewer - from the shots that linger too long, to the driving, repetitive music, to the screams of Tito, a poor little boy who ends up trapped in the building’s generator. 

At one point the camera turns upside down, followed soon after by the subtitles.

Credits appear almost in the middle of the picture, including all the names of the acts on the soundtrack, and with Gaspar Noe’s name appearing multiple times (in different fonts and backwards, to boot!).

This movie is tough to take it times, and is genuinely disturbing at times.

Yet despite the extended shots, there is little sense that the camera is lingering on the characters misery. The camera is more fixated on the characters' increasingly frenzied reactions to what other people are doing - or their growing detachment from reality.

The horror comes from the group's increasing disengagement from the horror around them (including the acts they commit to each other)

The movie also has moments of pitch black comedy: at one point Two characters stumble into a bathroom where another dancer is standing naked in the short, covered in blood. They immediately close the door and keep moving.

David, the self-proclaimed sex god finds all his attempts to get some rebuffed, and winds up either rejected or (repeatedly) beaten up. The only white cishet man in the company, his bravado is revealed as a paper tiger once the cohesion of the group collapses. Considering the critiques of homophobia in Noe's past work, could this be a bit of self-immolation?

Climax is one of my favourite movies of the year. A disaster movie in all but name, it is a singular experience that demands to be seen on the big screen. 

If you are interested in more Bond-related content, check out the reviews below. You can also subscribe to the podcast I co-host, THE JAMES BOND COCKTAIL HOUR, available wherever you get your podcasts.