Vortex

Released: 13 May 2022

Elderly woman seated at a cluttered desk, looking pensive; man in a striped jacket stands at a window, gazing outside.
Elderly woman seated at a cluttered desk, looking pensive; man in a striped jacket stands at a window, gazing outside.
3

Anticipation.

Gaspar Noé is one of cinema’s most arresting image makers, but his recent form has been patchy.

3

Enjoyment.

Equal parts absorbing and agonising. Argento and Lebrun are immense.

3

In Retrospect.

A tough watch – and not always in the way the director intends.

An elderly Parisian couple struggle with the trials of ageing in Gaspar Noé’s miserable but intriguing new film.

Gaspar Noé is one of the foremost purveyors of feel bad cinema, having built a successful career off of his love of making audiences squirm. His earlier work, notably Irréversible, Enter the Void and Climax, is filled with explicit, visceral images depicting humanity at its most chaotic. Watching these films, you get the impression he relishes putting us, much like his characters, through the proverbial wringer.

By comparison, Vortex is a positively moribund affair. An agonisingly slow-paced portrait of ageing in all its inglorious banality, it centres on an elderly couple (played by Dario Argento and Françoise Lebrun, whose names are accompanied by their respective birth years in the opening credits) living out their last days in a cluttered apartment in Paris.

Lui, a self-confessed hoarder, is writing a book on cinema, dreams and memory, while Elle, a retired psychiatrist, is struggling with dementia. We see their daily routines play out in parallel as both attempt to preserve some semblance of normalcy in the face of Elle’s worsening condition.

The film’s split-screen format means our focus constantly switches from one frame to the other, studying the miscellany of items the couple have amassed over the course of their marriage. Yet, despite the lived-in nature of their domicile, there is very little information about these characters to be gleaned from scanning their surroundings.

Draped figure in warm, earthy tones; hands emerging from fabric folds.

Beyond a few light expositional details, we’re given almost no insight into who these people are, or the rich and interesting lives they must have lived. They are more or less blank canvases onto which Noé projects his anxieties about his own mortality. (In 2020 the director suffered a near fatal brain haemorrhage, from which he has fully recovered.)

Vortex briefly gains some narrative momentum when Lui and Elle’s son Stéphane (Alex Lutz) drops in to check on his ailing folks, but much of the film’s near two-and-a-half-hour runtime is spent quietly observing the couple as their physical and mental health steadily declines.

For long stretches, time simply passes in this oxygenless liminal space. It’s an oddly compelling, if at times uncomfortably voyeuristic, viewing experience – like staring at a photograph of two strangers whose faces are fading away.

If this is Noé at his most compassionate and vulnerable, it’s telling that Vortex ultimately lacks the raw emotional impact of Michael Haneke’s Amour, another brutally honest, skilfully acted chamber piece about dementia and death, or Florian Zeller’s more recent The Father. Like those films, this is an intimate, formally inventive examination of the cruelties of old age, but there’s a detached quality to Noé’s approach which, ironically, may leave some viewers cold.

Little White Lies is committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them.

By becoming a member you can support our independent journalism and receive exclusive essays, prints, monthly film recommendations and more.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.