Perhaps we are living here in a series of horrifying events, as the story tells of a group of dancers walking through a terrifying situation. The story begins with French dancers meeting every day in an empty school building for their training on a winter night. These exercises may turn out to be a nightmarish nightmare when the Sangria mixes with LSD.
Climax is a self-indulgent exercise in misery, and an impersonal one because it is so heavily governed by its filmic techniques. The Emperor has no clothes while tripping on LSD.
Climax is an orgy of youthful enthusiasm, beautifully humanistic repugnance, compellingly animalistic repulsion, dazzlingly choreographed exhilaration and assuredly controlled grace; all soaked in hallucinogen-spiked sangria.
Climax isn't so much about the inevitability of chaos, but about the sadness of watching something beautiful fall apart. And it is never less than electrifying.
Consumed by the urge to shock, he lays on so much gratuitous nonsense in his lead-up to the hyperkinetic climax that the actors themselves seem unconvinced by what they're called upon to do and the whole thing collapses into absurdity and tedium.
"Climax" works, at least when it's willing to be a human drama. But then it sinks in that you're watching "Fame" directed by the Marquis de Sade with a Steadicam.
Noe has made a film that's seductive in its rhythms and bold visualization of his young dancers' sometimes beautiful, other times brutal somatic expressiveness.
Typically, the results are not nearly as originally dreaded, because no matter how far Noé's films can go off the rails -- some of us are still not over the final few minutes of Enter the Void -- they are always at the very least interesting to consume.
