Lux Æterna

Even with this short runtime, the movie is stressful work, its overly pretentious, nearly a self-parody. The last minutes are just suffering for viewers and characters. Its bland and overly symbolic, does not create any character arc, every one of the characters is just a cut out paper, not even two dimensional. L'art pour l'art, right? But in this case, its just artificial. Meaningless. And the worst: It does not entertain. Not one moment.

... though it may just get you twitching.

A number of patients in a high security psychiatric hospital decide to make a short film. Conscious of the fact that in medieval times they would most likely have been considered witches or warlocks, since their behaviour could only be interpreted as such during those times, they place the punishment for such behaviour at the centre of their creation.

Fortunately, as luck would have it, the split screen personality allows the viewer to gorge on twice as much pagan pantomime than would normally be recommend but, since this piece occupies slightly less than an hour, they just about get away with it, although that may depend on the medication you're currently prescribed.

You'll be pleased when the credits role, although it's unlikely you'll make it through to the end.

I support the evolution of art. In order for things to move forward, you need provocateurs to rock the foundation of what's deemed acceptable. Art made strictly to appeal to what already works is boring. Lvx Æterna embodies the rebellious spirit of creation, even if the results are borderline unwatchable.

Opening on a rambling conversation that lasts far too long then moving to a perplexing split screen where multiple scenes play simultaneously, often including different dialogue in different languages, all before a seizure inducing assault of light and sound. Gaspar Noé is screaming in your face, daring you to turn off his movie, and whether you do or not, you can't deny it's visceral impact.

The man is off in his own stratosphere, there really are no peers or precedents for this aesthetic. While his other work may offer more narrative meat, often coupled by more disturbing violence, this one seems to be a pure, unrefined shot of the disorienting bliss he's known for.

Like many forms of extreme music that seem to exist for the express purpose of pushing boundaries, it's a challenging experience that won't be for all tastes or moods. It's just a refreshing reminder that there's still untapped potential for defiant confrontational cinema.

Possibly the film in which Gaspar Noé most clearly shows his concept of cinema. The shooting is hell, even more than the staging. The need to challenge the comfort of the viewer (in the images and in the narration) is again present, in the different points of view. His vision surrounds the campaign of a fashion brand with mystery, which continues with the short film "Summer of '21" (2020), starring Charlotte Rampling. Only a director like Gaspar Noé can turn witches into Yves Saint Laurent models. "Sexocide: the genocide of the witches".

The "Lux Aeterna" (18+) is one more cinematic experiment from Gaspar Noé. Noe gained the worldwide fame in 2002, thanks to the scandalous film "Irreversibility" with Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel.

"Lux Aeterna" grew out of a collaboration between Saint Laurent and Gaspar Noé, the master of light and audience reactions, it is a surreal and hysterically beautiful narrative of a day on the set of a film about the Inquisition in the underground aesthetics of the 1990s. The shimmering light and quotes from Dostoevsky, Godard, Fassbinder and other iconic figures add contrasts to the film.

Two icons of French cinema of the last decades, Beatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg, are the driving mechanisms of the film. At first, they improvise in the dialogue, where they are ironic and exaggerative, but they tell about the creative underside of almost any film or production, and later they heat up emotional tension to the level of the atrocities of the Inquisition or hellish cauldrons. The aesthetic is amazing: crosses and bonfires, Charlotte in a Saint Laurent dress and the insane energy of Beatrice, covering even the madness of light and music at the end of the film. Beatrice is the witch in this story: charismatic, bright, even weird and uncomfortable for others, and the film within the film is her brainchild, which others are trying to appropriate.

The film turned out to be stylish and a bit provocative: about fashion and its victims, about vices and the fact that not everything is so simple with them, and, finally, about human selfishness. A neon beam pierces the "Lux Aeterna" with the truth that witches have a hard time even in the 21st century, because the crowd is always ready to lynch.