Vortex

French director Gaspar Noé is known as the enfant terrible of contemporary cinema. In the more intimate film Vortex, the maker of films including Irréversible and Climax reveals a different side of himself. Normally, Noé would choose sudden eruptions of violence and abrupt ends to life. But in this film, almost entirely divided across split screens, he shows the much slower process of physical and mental decay.

Vortex follows the final days in the lives of an elderly couple: a film critic (played by legendary Italian horror director Dario Argento) and a psychologist (French acting icon Françoise Lebrun). They are struggling with the typical irritations of old age, such as back pain, but also much more serious complaints such as dementia. Two separate cameras show, in largely improvised scenes, how the aged duo live parallel lives and lose their grip on reality. This psychological drama does contain several more typically Noé-style observations, suggesting how violent a human being’s last breath can be.

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