Before experiencing a near-fatal brain hemorrhage which
forced the Argentinian provocateur to reevaluate his aesthete which led to his
searing dementia drama Vortex, experimental writer-director Gaspar Noe
following the success of his Cannes favorite Climax was approached by the
fashion empire Yves Saint Laurent and creative director Anthony Vaccarello with
a commission project.Intended to be an
advert promoting Charlotte Gainsbourg as the new face of the FW17 ad campaign,
Noe instead spun the endeavor into a 51-minute short theatrical feature called Lux
Æterna or in in the time-honored tradition of its director using all capitalization
on the credits, LVX ÆTERNA.
One of the only truly meta-movie
offerings in Noe’s oeuvre (though all of his characters tend to be film nerds),
Lux Æterna finds Charlotte Gainsbourg, Beatrice Dalle, Abbey Lee (Mad
Max: Fury Road; The Neon Demon) playing themselves in an
experimental haute couture shoot mixing fashion, set pieces and detailed
background screens to produce a witch-burning oriented advertisement.Most of the film, presented in a variety of
split-screen formats with either two 1.33:1 screens side by side or one 1.85:1
screen posited in the middle with occasional triple-split-screens, consists of
behind-the-scenes drama of producers, directors, cinematographers and models
arguing over the direction the project should take. Interspersed throughout are inter-titled
screens of quotations from all manner of great world directors including but
not limited to Carl Theodor Dreyer as well as snippets of preexisting footage
from Day of Wrath and Haxan, forming a loose thesis about the
relationship between actor and director.Think of it as Noe’s Mulholland Drive, turning the notions of
art, creator and spectator onto their heads. Gradually over the course of its brief running
time, the film erupts into a stroboscopic psychedelic ear-splitting freak out
amid fits of psychosis and general pandemonium as a higher seemingly demonic
force overtakes the shoot.
Taking the provocateur’s penchant for
bright flashing lights flirting with inducing epileptic seizures to its logical
extreme, including direct references to the ‘beauty of experiencing a seizure’,
Lux Æterna is a postmodern treatise on filmmaking, acting and the
metaphysical power of a film production.On a more base and primal level it is an unmitigated dose of
experimental filmmaking that intends to push your eyes and ears as far as they
can see and hear.More than anything it
creates an aura and experience in the theater so dangerous when it originally
first premiered at Cannes paramedics were on site in case anyone had seizures
or fainting. As always, the star of this horror show is
Noe’s fluid and twisty camerawork lensed by partner-in-crime Benoit Debie who
captures the digitally rendered strobing backgrounds exquisitely.The ecospheric soundscape itself consists of
classical pieces as well as a grating ringing electronic sound that, yes, manages
to make you feel sicker than the horrible bass loop rendered by Thomas
Bangalter for the gay sex club scenes in Irreversible.Noe’s main cast members Gainsbourg, Dalle and
Lee start out playing themselves before becoming muses of sorts in the film’s
increasingly bizarre and maddening witch burning shoot, contorting their bodies
as though they’re being burned alive at the stake.
Improvised largely by the cast and shot
within a five-day period, this frontal sensory assault upon the viewer is a bit
like having violence done to you, imprinting searing vistas on the back of your
eyeballs as though you were staring directly into the sun. Like the production itself, what started out
as a by the numbers fashion shoot gradually devolves into psychedelic pandemonium. For running less than an hour, Lux Æterna though
a physical provocation and affront upon the viewer, is hard to forget once
experienced theatrically. While this
doesn’t quite achieve the deep-seated emotional power of his far more mature
work Vortex, this short endeavor contains such raw visceral power inside
it, you feel like you’re gazing into the ark of the covenant with Lux Æterna,
witnessing something implacably beautiful that will likely kill you for looking
at it.
