Vortex

Directed by Gaspar Noé

Running time: 2hrs15 | REVIEWED BY CATHERINE BRAY

Dario Argento and Françoise Lebrun star in Vortex

It always feels difficult for me, personally, to recommend a film that is melancholy, upsetting or harrowing, because I know that when I myself am sitting down and trying to figure out what I want to watch of a Friday night, the last thing I’m likely to think is, “Perhaps something melancholy or upsetting? What I really fancy tonight is being well and truly harrowed.”

I don’t naturally incline towards films that force you to stare directly into the mundane yet inescapable abyss of your own mortality. I recognise the value of such films as art, I respect their makers, but they aren’t my natural beat. I mention all this by way of saying that when I say that you should go and see Vortex, it’s really not a recommendation that I make lightly. I’m not one of those writers who would happily contend that it is your duty as a filmgoer to confront the sick joke of our shared human frailty on a weekly basis, you understand. My shelves are not lined with Ingmar Bergman Blu-rays. I do not own the collected works of Sylvia Plath.

I had no idea what Vortex was about before I got sucked into it. It turns out that it’s not a wry or smirking take on sex, violence, drugs or any of Gaspar Noé’s usual preoccupations. In a way, that makes it even more shocking, as if your favourite hoary old sitcom just dropped an episode without a laugh track. To quote the writer Donna Tartt, it’s the “old familiar jokester cast—with surprising effect—in a tragic role.” It also makes stunning use of simple formal innovations employed in the service of emotional, rather than intellectual, impact.

But whether you’re familiar with Noé’s work or not, Vortex is a deeply moving, profoundly powerful, yet unsentimental film about shared old age, the slow approach of death, and the ultimate impossibility of facing said death with anyone other than yourself for company.

VORTEX (2021) Written by Gaspar Noé | Shot by Benoît Debie | Edited by Denis Bedlow

In cinemas now.