Vortex

The split screen was not planned. On the first day of shooting, Gaspar Noé and cinematographer Benoît Debie shot both single-camera and two-camera material. Watching it that evening, Noé decided the split version was far more interesting, and the next day they reshot with two cameras, Debie operating one and Noé the other. The film runs a hundred and forty-two minutes and spends almost all of them divided. There is no script either. The film was improvised from a ten-page concept and shot in early 2021. Its source is personal: Noé's experience with his mother, and his own near-fatal brain haemorrhage. A husband and wife live in the same flat at the same time in two separate frames. Elle is a retired psychiatrist with dementia; Lui is a film critic with a weak heart. Françoise Lebrun plays Elle and the director Dario Argento plays Lui. Who it is for: viewers who can bear old age and dementia shown without decoration, at close to real time. Who it is not for: anyone expecting Noé's shock cinema. There is no provocation here, only an extending loss that the film makes you watch at length.