Couramiaud -Laurent Lufroy and F
Sofia Boutella, Romain Guillermic, Souhelia Yacoub and Kiddy Smile in "Climax"
At least a dozen characters are introduced at the onset of Climax via video recordings of their audition interviews with an unseen choreographer for an international dance tour. All are young, all dance; otherwise, their backgrounds and personalities diverge. Most are French but some come from elsewhere. Most are white but many are black and one is of Middle Eastern heritage. The ranks of men and women are about even. It’s an interesting way to preview a cast of characters, but like everything else in Climax, the intro drags on and on. It’s never a good feeling when a 96-minute movie feels like eternity spent in a dark hole.
French director Gaspar Noé assembles his youthful crew inside an abandoned school where they rehearse for their tour. It’s a violently coherent number compounded from interpretive motion and breakdancing. Climax is set in 1996, meaning no one is sending selfies, but maybe the point is: they can’t call the outside world on their mobile phones but are trapped within the horror they collectively conjure up. Perhaps in a perverse response to ’90s rave culture, someone spiked the sangria bowl with a hallucinogen. Maybe the acid is bad or maybe it’s the vibes, but the party goes utterly out of bounds. Some will die. All will be hurt somehow.
Noé engineers bravura tracking shots as he follows individual dancers and couples around the floor. Hints drop during the dialogue of interpersonal tensions, followed by mounting unease and jitters once the drug kicks in. What happens next is a bedlam of unfiltered ugliness shot in grainy textures. It’s as if one of the partygoers was a cinematographer, not a choreographer, and kept the digicam running through the chaos. Recriminations and fists fly; a knife is pulled; blood spills; some revelers even find time for sex. Someone’s child (he sipped the sangria; mom was preoccupied) electrocutes himself, shutting down the power and leaving only the dim emergency lights, glowing red and lurid as hell.
Along the way, Noé interjects pseudo-profound captions along the lines of “LIFE IS A COLLECTIVE IMPOSSIBILITY.” Did Sartre or someone coin that bit? Climax brings to mind reading de Sade with the realization that, after a while, perversity grows dull.
