Talented and diverse dancers from every walk of life gather in a remote, empty building to rehearse but a hard day’s work goes really awry while celebrating as their drinks get spiked and the hallucinations take over them.
Writer/director Gaspar Noé, well known for making his audience feel uncomfortable, helms Climax with bravery aplenty. Forget classic narratives, forget Hollywood morals and standards, forget scripts written in detail. Get into Irreversible (2002) and Enter the Void (2009) mode and just let go.
The largely improvised monologues and dialogues in the beginning and middle of the film respectively could have been trimmed a tad as the audience don’t need this large amount of information to establish a point of view about each and every one of the characters. Of course, the turn the celebration takes, creates the colossal contrast between the first and the second act.
Excellent camera work, amazing photography, powerful soundtrack, divine choreography, and brilliant performances. Especially, given that, other than Sofia Boutella, no one has had any acting experience prior to the film. The protracted shots will fascinate you as the uncut surrealism reveals in real-time the escalating paranoia reaching its… climax!
Mesmerising! Sensual! Hallucinatory! Enchanting!
You can find it here: https://amzn.to/39kHGuw