Gas­par Noé: ​‘Vor­tex isn’t about the death of cin­e­ma, but its evolution’

Gas­par Noé’s lat­est film, Vor­tex, charts the final days of an elder­ly cou­ple played by French actor Françoise Lebrun and the god­fa­ther of gial­lo, Dario Argen­to. She is a retired psy­chi­a­trist and he is a strug­gling author, and we watch as they suc­cumb to var­i­ous ail­ments in their ram­shackle Parisian apartment.

While Vor­tex is Noé least overt­ly provoca­tive on fea­ture paper, it reveals itself just as much of a stu­pe­fy­ing expe­ri­ence as his oth­er cre­ations, due to its extreme­ly real­is­tic split-screen por­tray­al of age­ing and its con­se­quences for those who are left behind.

LWLies: You suf­fered a near-fatal brain haem­or­rhage in 2020. Was the idea for that film with you pri­or to your med­ical expe­ri­ence? Did your inci­dent influ­ence it?

Noé: I had it for many years. I always thought I want­ed to make a movie about an old char­ac­ter and when I shot Seul Con­tre Tous in 1998. Its star, Philippe Nahon, was 30 years old­er than me, and now Dario Argen­to is 30 years old­er than me. I get attached to old­er char­ac­ters. My father is 88. He’s extreme­ly intel­li­gent. He writes all the time. The char­ac­ter of Dario is kind of an exten­sion of me, my father, Philippe Nahon, all these peo­ple that have been close to me.

When did you first meet Argento?

At the Toron­to Film Fes­ti­val, 30 years ago when I was show­ing Carne, in 1991. I have a pho­to of that night. He told me he would be my co-pro­duc­er in a future film, and of course it didn’t hap­pen but we stayed friends and every year we would see each oth­er in dif­fer­ent fes­ti­vals and I became real­ly close to his daugh­ter who by the way helped me a lot to con­vince him to play in the movie. We have a very friend­ly relationship.

What’s your favourite Argen­to film? 

I would say the one that I’ve seen the most is The Bird with the Crys­tal Plumage. But I love Deep Red, I love Sus­piria, I love Inferno.

The book that Argento’s char­ac­ter writes, Psy­che, is it imag­i­nary or based on something? 

Psy­che sound­ed to me like a very good title and I want­ed to use it for Cli­max. So the shoot­ing title for Cli­max was Psy­che, because it’s a psy­che­del­ic movie. The Ger­man girl in the movie who spiked the san­gria with LSD was called Psy­che. What I was wor­ried about when the movie was close to being released is that if I keep the title as Psy­che every­body would under­stand that it was her who spiked it since the begin­ning. But I thought that one day I’d be able to use the title and when I was shoot­ing this movie I didn’t know what title I would use. On the shoot every­thing was labelled ​‘Demen­tia’ but then there’s an old movie from the 50s, a real­ly good one, called Demen­tia. Psy­che was per­fect for his writ­ing because he’s writ­ing a book about dreams and cinema.

The way the film evolves into a poignant, dev­as­tat­ing com­men­tary on how rapid life moves on after one’s gone seems deeply per­son­al to you. 

In the movie there’s three deaths; the death of the father, the death of the moth­er, and then the death of the traces, the foot­prints of their life. At the very end, on the floor there’s the book he was writ­ing, Psy­che, and it’s going to the garbage. I had three deaths around me these last two years that were very close. The father of Lucile, my life part­ner, died. Philippe Nahon, the actor from Seul Con­tre Tous died from Covid. Then Fer­nan­do Solanas, the film direc­tor, he was the best friend of my father, his son was my best friend, he was an uncle and a men­tor, I start­ed work­ing in cin­e­ma with him. I saw those three peo­ple die and thought about her­itage, what to do with all the belong­ings of those peo­ple. I was sur­round­ed by death and its con­se­quences. When I did the movie it felt like the most nat­ur­al thing because I was in the mid­dle of that state of mind.

Amour by Michael Haneke feels like it would work as a dou­ble bill with Vor­tex. It’s anoth­er film that depicts the heart­break of watch­ing your loved one fall vic­tim to age-relat­ed conditions.

I saw Amour at the same time my moth­er was dying in Argenti­na. Euthana­sia would have helped her but it couldn’t hap­pen. I’ve nev­er cried so much watch­ing a movie in my life. What I liked besides the fact that he got the Palme d’Or, was that final­ly there was a movie deal­ing with a sub­ject that’s very uni­ver­sal. Some­thing that touch­es every fam­i­ly. That sto­ry was the sto­ry of my fam­i­ly. A movie like Amour opened up the doors to rep­re­sent the same kind of sit­u­a­tions that are extreme­ly uni­ver­sal. I wasn’t think­ing of Amour when I made this movie, I was think­ing of sit­u­a­tions with my moth­er, my grand­moth­er, the death of these three men last year… The inspi­ra­tion was life itself, not anoth­er movie.

My father said that this movie is the best thing that I’ve ever done because it remind­ed him of sit­u­a­tions that are prob­a­bly the most dra­mat­ic moments in his life. I know that some peo­ple I know who love trans­gres­sive cin­e­ma came out of this movie and they didn’t say good­bye to me and they called me one week lat­er say­ing that they were in such a weird state of mind… It’s extreme in the por­tray­al of ageing.

Is this also a film about the death of cinema?

It’s not about the death of cin­e­ma, but about its evo­lu­tion. Movie the­atres have dis­ap­peared. In the cen­tre of Buenos Aires, there used to be 60 cin­e­mas, now there are two left. The remain­ing are emp­ty because every­one is watch­ing from platforms.

You most­ly speak about films, but what about TV series? 

I have many friends who are addict­ed to TV series and they can spend the whole Sat­ur­day or Sun­day watch­ing 10 episodes in two days. I don’t have that addic­tion. I have bare­ly seen any TV series. I saw a few when I was a teenag­er. But besides Cher­nobyl, I don’t think I have seen one sin­gle TV series in the past 20 years.

If you were offered to do a TV series, how would you react?

I would watch one or two to see how to do the nar­ra­tion over ten episodes of one hour. The com­mit­ment is much longer. When you make a movie, you shoot in 15, 25 days. For a TV series, it’s six months of shoot­ing. Six months of edit­ing. I don’t know if I can put myself in that kind of com­mit­ment. I like being free to move.

Do you think TV series are a dan­ger for cinema? 

No I don’t think so, they’re com­pli­men­ta­ry. They speak the same lan­guage. It depends on the project, some are appro­pri­ate for TV. I was offered the TV adap­ta­tion of Michel Houellebecq’s ​‘Les Par­tic­ules Élé­men­taires’ [‘Atom­ised’], and I read it and thought it was great! But the issue was, who is going to finance the adap­ta­tion of a book that con­tains a lot of porno­graph­ic scenes over sev­en hours? You can cir­cum­cise the book for TV, but what’s left? I don’t think any TV plat­form or chan­nel would have paid for the full, real adaptation.

What’s your advice on how to show sex on screen?

It’s like when you film peo­ple fight­ing, you just put the cam­era there… It’s all about touch­ing. There was one scene late­ly that I’ve seen and thought was very sexy, it was the kiss between Pene­lope Cruz and Mile­na Smit in Madres Para­le­las. There’s a moment in which the two girls are talk­ing and you have this les­bian ten­sion between the two char­ac­ters who are sup­pos­ed­ly het­ero­sex­u­als, so you hope they’re going to kiss and then it hap­pens. I thought that scene was very touch­ing. There aren’t many erot­ic scenes that are so touch­ing emo­tion­al­ly, it’s all about depict­ing sex as a sport and not about a link between humans.