film

Climax (2012) is a visceral descent into collective madness, staged with the sort of unchained audacity that has always defined Gaspar Noé’s cinema. Set in a remote dance hall, the film follows a troupe of performers celebrating after rehearsal, but their night unravels when their sangria is spiked with LSD. What begins as electrifying choreography becomes something much darker – a spiralling loss of control captured in long, prowling takes.

Noé focuses on bodies in motion, with performers including Sofia Boutella at the hypnotic centre of the film. The camera sways and flips, the soundtrack pulses and the mood curdles into paranoia and cruelty. Dialogue is sparse, with Noé preferring to focus on sensation and rhythm, as he has so effectively so many times in the past, making for an intensely physical experience. Brutal, stylish and deliberately disorienting, Climax is less a conventional film than a fascinating ordeal, and one that will be all the more starkly rendered on Sala Phenomena's freshly updated screen and sound system.