Vortex 2021 is the last film shown at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

In a funeral atmosphere, after the guests began to leave, and the number of empty seats increased, "and yet he triumphed," says Jason Solomons.

Contrary to his shocking approach to which the audience knew him, where films of rape, drugs and violence, the controversial French director, Gaspar Noé, returned - affected by the death of many of his close friends, and motivated by his personal approach to death recently, following a brain hemorrhage he suffered in 2019 - “To surprise everyone with this extraordinary film, which is one of his best works, which is a tale of mysterious horror and unknown dread, in terms of idea and execution,” says Zane Brooks, film editor of the British newspaper The Guardian.

It brings us back to the atmosphere of the films "Amour" 2012, which won the Palme d'Or, and "The Father" 2020, the Oscar winner.

Those films that plant scenes of love amid moments of cruelty, with the difference that Noe's film is darker, harsher, honest and focused.

Cage in the zoo

"Vortex" is a film that Noe introduces to "those whose minds will collapse before their hearts," as he stated in his editorial.

It takes place in an apartment in the heart of Paris, where we follow an elderly couple who go about their daily routine, without knowing anything about them, until their son Stephane (Alex Lutz) pops up and calls them Papa and Mama.

We see the veteran Italian horror film director, Dario Argento, 80, as the husband (father), the heart-sick screenwriter - whose name has not been revealed - and who is obsessed with finishing a book about cinema's relationship with the subconscious, causing him to rush into angry writing with two fingers on an old machine, amid chaos From stacked books and bits of paper posters on the wall.

As he moves from his sofa, to his desk, to the bathroom, he passes his wife (French actress Françoise Lebron, 77), a retired psychiatrist who suffers from dementia, yet continues to write prescriptions, keeping the place around her stocked. by discs.

With a whole world in her head, we see her slipping slowly into a semi-silent dementia, making her feel very lonely and lost in her apartment.

She sneaks into stores early, wanders the crowded aisles, from the computer store to the grocery, not knowing where she is, not even what she's coming for.

Let's find ourselves - according to Solomons - before "two people who loved each other and cared for each other's well-being, but as they got older, they became like a couple of chimpanzees sharing the same cage in the zoo, each hopping aimlessly over the walls."

It's all in a "merciless, yet poignant drama" where capitulation to fate is the dominant influence on Noe's "vortex," according to author Pat Brown.

The French-Argentine director of the exciting origin, Gaspar Noé, returned to surprise everyone with this exceptional film (communication sites)

Unprecedented creativity

Filmed with an impressively clever cinematic trick, the film's opening feel underscores just how far apart two long-married people can be.

This is by means of a new technology represented by a split screen depicting a gap between them - symbolized by a nuclei with a black separating bar - that it is almost impossible to close again.

When the sleeping wife wakes up next to her husband, the screen gradually splits in two.

The left section shows the husband continuing to sleep, while on the right we follow LeBron getting up and going to the kitchen to make coffee.

To start from this moment, the couple's experiences in divergence and overlap.

As LeBron wanders around looking for something you've forgotten, the split screen makes you don't know exactly where to look, especially since you don't want to take your eyes off either side of the image.

This made Gaspar Noé even more creative with his great innovation of capturing everything on a split screen, using two portable cameras that follow his heroes all the time, even when they are sitting side by side on the sofa, or lying together in bed.

As everything in the picture looked old, not only individuals;

It's the neighborhood, the buildings, the books, the typewriter, the papers, and other details of the house that Gaspard Noe's cameras have made us spend as much time looking at them, their cues, as we spend so much time watching the characters.

A movie you've never seen before

The oscillation and flow between anger, resentment, confusion and fear, and LeBron's crying of bewilderment and inability to communicate continues, until Argento extends his hand across both parts of the screen, to touch his wife's hand, in a moment of attachment and tenderness, "makes you feel the heartbeat of the entire cinema slows down," he said. Solomons. He adds, "The overwhelming human touch and overwhelming visual beauty make this film one of Noe's best and thought-provoking works, as the claustrophobia, and the long running time of two and a half hours, was a wonderful test of audience endurance."

Because there are no happy endings waiting for these people, the film is not without sensitive moments, opening thousands of wounds that make long relationships fade over the years, even as love remains.

Mother and father want the best for each other, and are loved by their son and grandson.

But the film seeks to discover that "love may be a very weak bulwark, in the face of ill health, and start walking towards the grave," says Brooks.

To give us the long time we spend with these two people, “a very real and insightful look at what our grandparents and our parents are going to face, and one day, we’ll have to face if we live a long life,” says Todd McCarthy, who recommends the movie, “because you sure do. You've never seen anything like it before."