Vortex

An elderly couple — he a film critic and author (Dario Argento), she a former psychiatrist (Françoise Lebrun) — live in a Paris apartment. While he works on a book about cinema and dreams, she increasingly loses touch with reality due to her advancing dementia. Their son (Alex Lutz) tries in vain to persuade his parents to move into assisted living. But both cling to their apartment and memories until illness and death inevitably tear everything apart. Gaspar Noé, the brilliant but uncompromising director of daring films such as “Irreversible,” “Enter the Void,” and “Climax,” shows himself here to be intimate but similarly unsparing in his portrait of an aging and ultimately decaying couple. The camera increasingly shows the isolated worlds of the two long-time partners in split screen, thus tracing the growing distance between them. VORTEX portrays two lives that are no longer in sync, even though they still seem to share a life together. With this melancholic portrait of the transience of all earthly things, Noé's film was invited to premiere in the prestigious Cannes competition before going on to win awards and critical acclaim at numerous festivals. “Vortex” is not an easy viewing experience – but one that is worthwhile in its depth and intensity! "VORTEX is like a cinematic declaration of love for beauty and for the thorns [of the rose] that are also part of that beauty. And Lebrun's portrayal of a woman whose brain is steadily deteriorating, who is losing her speech and, in the lucid moments she has left, despairs of it, is simply breathtaking. [...] Gaspar Noé made VORTEX with only a lengthy exposé. There was no classic screenplay. All the scenes were improvised, which gives them a directness that is rarely seen in cinema." (Sascha Westphal, on: epd-film.de)