Clímax

Nunca habíamos tenido una fiesta tan salida de madre. Una brillante introducción musical de una sola toma, un poco de parloteo para el reconocimiento de personajes y allá vamos. Para los participantes/desgraciados que no quieren, una sangría mezclada con eficacia puede hacer magia. Un trip, un viaje filmado, redondo, más parecido a Enter the Void en la filmografía de Noé, pero esta vez en el espacio de unas pocas habitaciones y un pasillo. Baile y juerga, paranoia colectiva, locura alucinógena. Suspenso y, a veces, incluso miedo, pero, en última instancia, bastante moderado en sexo y violencia para ser Noé. Cuatro estrellas dentro de la atmósfera del festival (es decir, con hambre constante de innovaciones), pero por lo demás es una tontería sin contenido y obsesionada por la forma con una pretendida visión filosófica como la mayor parte de su filmografía. [Cannes] (16.05.2018)

Engaging provocation by Noé which to a great extent tests the endurance and patience of the viewer. I’m not sure I would want to watch it at home on the PC, but in the main theatre of Hotel Thermal, at the KVIFF, thumbs up. Already at the beginning, when Noé serves the closing scene and the opening credits of the film that is about to follow, it is clear that this is not something that plays strictly by the rules. The dancing number at the beginning is brilliant. The following garrulous passage lost me, but then Climax got me back once the Sangría with LSD started to hit. The last half hour is a stress test for the senses of the viewer; a descent into utter darkness and a state of altered consciousness that made my head spin. The experience, in the strict sense of the word, is pleasant, but heavy. (15.08.2018)

Aggressive, provocative, controversial and boundary-pushing, Gaspar Noe delivers his best work and it is once again an original, fresh and uncomfortably steamy spectacle. The film is even based on a true story, about thirty dancers finishing their American tour and intending to celebrate properly, but the evening goes awry when LSD is mixed into the Sangria and unfortunately not everyone makes it to the morning. This dance horror drug musical is one of a kind and compelling enough to keep you interested, though it's good to know the director's previous work beforehand so you have an idea of what you're getting into. The opening dance number is absolutely breathtaking and enthralling and the witty sex references suited me just fine, but once the party gets underway in full swing the hallucinogenic trippy ride begins, with everyone involved experiencing a nightmare you wouldn’t believe. There are a couple of uncomfortable scenes, though the violence is slightly skimped on, but it makes up for it with solid music, dance numbers, very racy girls, sex scenes and original cinematography with a filter at the end albeit too chaotic for some. Sofia Boutella rocks again and since I first saw her in Kingsman she has only surprised and shocked! Solid for me. 80%. (03.02.2019)

Gaspar Noé dances an extremely dirty dance, and with his help, this manages to entrance and fascinate you for quite some time. And yet during the excessively stretched-out dialogue, a feeling arose that someone was stretching me out. And that was before the anticipated barrage of purposeless violence and annoying antics accompanied by the spinning of the camera was even on the program, and the fact that the stubborn director refused to move from one spot even a little bit after so many years almost made me laugh. And I had already lost my patience with works presented to the clever audience long ago. (31.10.2018)

Many people I know love this film, so I apologise to them beforehand. I suffered. A totally empty camera exhibtion that if it wasn’t for the titles nobody would have a clue as to what it is supposed to be about. The staging must have been hard, there’s no doubt about that, but that’s pretty much all I can praise. If you played only the soundtrack to someone, they would sue you for personal injuries, and this is the very aggressive and shallow way Noe tries to achieve the depression and exhaustion of the audience, also in purely visual terms. And I don’t see anything praise-worthy about that, because other than fuck-all, the only thing I can take from this is that Boutella has wonderful shape and movements and that in the next party I will drink my beer from MY own glass. I’m afraid that this is my first and also last film by Noé. (27.02.2019)

¡La mejor película de baile desde Dirty Dancing! La cinematografía es increíble. La cámara da vueltas alrededor de los personajes, dando largas zancadas, saltos mortales, volteretas, arrastrándose boca abajo, mirando verticalmente hacia abajo... a veces da vértigo. Noé juega con el espectador, ya sea a través de los créditos finales, que no aparecen en el final, o a través del montaje: en un momento dado muestra escenas muy largas en una sola toma, para luego mostrar, en contraste, una secuencia de escenas con un montaje bastante obvio y agresivo. La estructura de esta película es, en definitiva, completamente polimorfa y se aleja por completo de las convenciones. Y ciertamente consigue cautivar, divertir, disgustar, perturbar y asustar al espectador, ciertamente todo lo que Noé pretendía. [KVIFF 2018] (07.07.2018)

Ver las películas de Gaspar Noé es como descubrir nuevas formas de comunicación. La escena de baile de apertura es la perfección hipnótica y el éxtasis puro, todo lo demás se trata principalmente de qué tan lejos está dispuesto a llegar y qué tan lejos llega su resistencia como espectador. Magnífico show del camarógrafo y coreografía epiléptica acompañada de techno en un viaje o Noé sabe mezclar sangría a la perfección. Reunió sus marcas más frecuentes y las esparció en una fiesta de baile y así creó a propósito un apocalipsis alucinógeno con nula acción pero máxima eficiencia. Paseo experimental salvaje y depredador, increíblemente progresista y al mismo tiempo narcisista inmerso en sí mismo, pero qué se puede esperar de Noé también. (07.07.2018)

Almost every other better film critic has outlined a quick, more or less modest parallel between Bosch's depiction of Hell from the triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights" and the second part of Noé's film, i.e., the "horror" part. It would be a mistake, as every other critic does, to separate the first part (before things go wrong) and the second part of the film, just as it is impossible to separate the parts of the triptych. Here, we can rely on the idea that was expressed in Jean Eustache's film about Bosch's Hell: "I really feel that it is in the third painting, in the description of Hell, where Bosch finally lets himself go. He lets himself be carried away by the description of pleasure, senseless and complete. This pleasure is so complete that even its consciousness is not present." If the relationship between painful pleasure and the attractiveness of terror is only a conscious contradiction, while at the level of the unconscious, it is the desired goal of the death urge, towards which we willingly walk with joyful tears of horror immediately after LSD disables our social inhibitors, it is a possibility that Noé does not precisely examine - he only shows it. That is his classic position for me: a mixture of shallowness and a desire for depth. Fortunately, we already know that contradictions are not mutually exclusive, but collide with each other, so it is not possible to give up on Noé's work for such reasons, just as Bosch also had a troubled relationship with perspective and, therefore, with the depth of the field; criticizing Noé for shallowness would be nothing more than bourgeois attachment to the conscious sphere of film. (28.02.2021)

Dirty Dancing meets Trainspotting in ultra-hardcore mode. I'm convinced that Gaspar Noé is not entirely normal; that said, in the vast majority of cases, it's rather to the benefit of the cause, because films this intense simply aren’t made every day. Actually, Climax starts quite unobtrusively and for a long time gives the impression of a visually appealing "party movie", of course with the exception of the last approx. 40 minutes. From a certain point on it becomes such a mess that I couldn't help but shake my head and allow my strong negative emotions to flow towards all the characters. It's definitely not a date movie or an otherwise similarly oriented romantic evening, but the experience is intense and evocative. And the predatory, neurotic, and slightly epileptic directorial style still amuses me a lot. (22.06.2019)

I must admit that there are some excellent dance moves here and I like the theme music too. However, as the plot progressed, I was getting more and more anxious for this rather perverse party to end. I'm definitely not watching this one again. (55%) (27.02.2022)