Dance meets horror in Gaspar Noé latest film
Climax, apparently based on a true incident that took place in Paris in the winter of 1996. The story opens at the end, with an overhead shot of a bloody woman stumbling through the snow, before falling into the ground. From there we are swiftly taken to the beginning — a series of taped auditions with dancers played on an old TV set that's flanked by
books on one side and VHS tapes of classic horror films like Dario Argento's
Suspiria, Andrzej Żuławski's
Possession, Lucio Fulci's
Zombie and Luis Buñuel's
Un Chien Andalou on the other. "My worst nightmare? To find myself alone," says one girl, while another guy says he is ready to do anything for dance. As these racially and sexually diverse crew of electro dancers, voguers, krumpers and waackers come together for a
mesmerising dance routine — gyrating to an instrumental remix of Cerrone's
Supernature — the choreographed chaos paves the way for paranoia and suspicion when someone spikes the sangria at a post-rehearsal party with LSD, letting loose a wave of claustrophobic madness that descends on the troupe with varying effects, with some acting increasingly violent, some flirty (to the point of becoming incestuous), and others continuing to dance, contorting their bodies in grotesque, weird ways. Inventive, seductive and unnerving in equal measure, Noé imbues the film with a neon-y, surreal red-green palette, all accompanied by throbbing techno-house music, while artfully painting a hellscape of an unexpected descent into disorder and pandemonium.
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