Lux Æterna

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.

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".

As a fan of Gaspar Noé, I enjoy his movies even when I feel sick of what I see in his movies. I'm also pretty sure that the most catchy element of his movies is the visuals. So far, i've seen his every feature films except Love. Climax, Irreversible and Enter the Void, which are mostly the favorites of the audience, achieved giving fancy visuals. Strangely, visuals of Lux Aeterna does not make you satisfied since the story leads to literally nowhere worthy. Instead, this time Gaspar Noé tries to introduce a point of view to role of woman in film industry and also in history. I can say that he does it well. Lux Aeterna is a "must watch" for Noé fans because in every second you will feel the style of Gaspar Noé. But if you are not a fan, this movie is a pure boredom and agony.

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.

While watching the movie You are definitely feeling the stress on the set. If you want to watch a regular cinema and if you don't know who is Gaspar Noe you might say "what was that ? What happened ?". As in the previous films of Gaspar you are not just standing there and watching the movie you feel what characters feels.