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Somehow, Gaspar Noe has returned.
To that end, his films have become increasingly improvisatory, shot and edited in seemingly record time.
And he has never stopped trying to use cinema to cause physical reactions in the viewer.
InVortex, the split screen makes the characters alienation visceral.
I told him, Its about an old couple.
He said, But Im not old!
I know youre not old.
Youre theenfant terribleof the Italian cinema!
But I think there were two things that made him say yes.
Im going to be taking care of one of the cameras.
You will be taking care of your character.
That made him more comfortable.
Hes not an actor; hes never had to remember lines.
On the other hand, Francoise Lebrun is a veteran actress.
Theyre a very believable couple.
I wont really understand what youre saying.
She said, Okay, let me cook the character my way.
And it was perfect.
The use of the split screen heightens their alienation from one another.
So there was no real drama.
And the guy who plays your father is cool?
But dont listen to them, theyre very stingy.
They will not give you gifts.
And I know that you certainly want a nice gift.
He said, Yes, yes, yes.
What kind of gift would you like?
He said, Oh, theres this motorbike, like a motorbike for kids who are four years old.
I said, You want that motorbike?
If you manage to break the car with the other car, you will get your gift.
He was so happy.
They dont understand why he turned crazy.
Francoise, who certainly had planned something for the scene, was totally lost and she started crying.
(Are you okay, my love?)
Thats the magic of cinema.
Sometimes things happen that you dont expect.
Its very weird visually, and the performances are all perfect.
How much of you is in the character of the son, Stephane?I dont do heroin.
Yeah, hes also a loser.
But half of my close friends that I like are losers.
Theyve been partying and doing drugs, and they end up with family problems they cannot escape from.
I feel like almost all of your major characters on some level have some connection to you, though.
I feel like youre always putting some version of yourself in your characters.Yeah.
Also, the son inVortexsays he works in the film industry but hes probably just doing documentaries.
Hes fighting against his inner demon which is that he wants to take heroin again.
I know 100 guys like him in Paris.
And when it comes to the mother, she reminds me partly of my own mother.
But also, I had a brain hemorrhage two years ago.
Theres a lot of crack in Paris nowadays.
All these people who were alone in the streets.
Especially the first year of the confinement.
I felt like I was dying.
It was during the Christmas period, and I was drinking a lot with my father.
I think it was a mix of too much alcohol and that oyster poisoning.
Stay at your place.
Just watch movies and dont go out.
I said, Oh, but all my friends are partying.
Im being much sweeter to myself.
So I stayed at my place watching movies on Blu-ray.
I bought many through eBay.
All these Japanese classics that I hadnt seen.
And then suddenly, COVID appeared, and everybody was hiding at home.
There were no more parties, nothing.
I was also told I should do some sports.
I was on my bike going through the empty city during the day and watching DVDs at night.
I dont know if anything like that will ever come back to our lives.
There was something very dreamish about the confinement, even though I lost many close friends from COVID.
Ironically, during the pandemic, it seemed like everybody discoveredLoveon Netflix.
Were you aware of this?Yeah.
People needed to masturbate.
Now people dont buy DVDs.
Of course it wasLove.
They would never go to see an erotic movie in a theater because it was dangerous.
And people were watching it many times because they needed some support for the masturbation.
How do they masturbate nowadays now thatLoveis not streamable?
Which movie are they doing it to?
That really touched me and probably inspiredVortex.
I didnt know Kinoshitas work until one day I went to the Criterion office.
So I took it, but I didnt know what it was about.
And then I saw many other Kinoshitas.
I also loved the movies of Kenji Mizoguchi that I missed.
And also I discovered Mikio Naruse.
It was like going back to my adolescence.
The worst movies you see on planes.
And Hollywood movies are becoming worse and worse every day.
Have you seen the last James Bond?
[Blows raspberry.]
I remember watchingThe Man With the Golden Gunlike ten times in a row when I was 12 years old.
And also its so talkative.
Talk, talk, talk.
Those movies were fresh, funny, sexy, and now theres nothing sexy about them.
I know sexiness is banned from blockbusters now.
Even the Marvel movies, theyre talkative.
Do you think its actually worse or do you think youve changed?Im sure its much worse.
From time to time, you have one that comes out, but theyre rare.
For example, among the blockbusters, I really enjoyedTitanicwhen I saw it.
Wait, I found one movie that I like from Hollywood.Joker.
I enjoyed it as much as I would enjoy the James Bond movies when I was a kid.
Thats interesting, becauseJokeris a very dark movie.I liked it because it was dark.
Thats one of the few examples of enjoyable movies coming out of Hollywood.
I also likedArrivalvery much, by Denis Villeneuve.
Thats the other one.
I didnt want to sayArrivalbecause I said it two years ago and everyone said, Ohh, what?
The scenes of the father, who has Alzheimers, escaping from the house and getting lost.
Ive been through similar situations with my mother.
The whole day, no one would know where the fuck she was.
She had disappeared in the city.
So when I sawA Separation, it reminded me of things that I had lived.
Actually, nowadays, Im very much inspired by Iranian cinema.
Along withA Separationand some others youve mentioned, there have been films likeAmourandThe Fatherthat have dealt with dementia.
The subject of aging, old age, dementia its so common in real life.
The main fear among people in the western world is getting old and losing your mind before dying.
Its a kind of taboo that people have parents with dementia.
I found this out just by showing my movie.
My mother tells me, I want to go back home while Im at her place.
There should be 800 movies about it.
It also seems to me that all your films are about the loss of control.
Peoplewantto lose control because theyre bored by their lives.
But in this case, its a biological loss of control and its a very common one.
What about the strobing effect inLux terna?
Which feels like an extension of your fascination with losing control.
It seems that theres something enjoyable that I havent tried yet.
Im very proud of that.
I really like the final credits.
Among all the credits that Ive done, thats probably the most hypnotic.
Also, I didnt invent the flicker and I didnt invent the color flicker.
The responses toLux ternawere interesting.
When it premiered at Cannes in 2019, a lot of people interpreted it as your MeToo movie.
Was that on your mind when you made it?No.
My whole script was just two or three lines long.
It wasnt even a page.
I told Beatrice and Charlotte to talk about witchcraft and about other film shoots, and they improvised.
And it became a 52-minute movie after five days of shooting.
But also, you cannot disconnect yourself from the moment in which youre shooting the movie.
Its just how people describe the movie.
My mother was a feminist.
I never trusted a man who says, Im a feminist, but yeah, I can be testosterophobic.
you could bewhat?I can be testosterophobic.
The male testosterone can be very boring and annoying and repetitive.
So mostly in my movies, the girls have the cool parts and the men have the stupid parts.
Youre making these movies faster and faster, it seems.Its because I want to show my movies in Cannes.
We finished on the 10th of April, I think.
The Cannes Film Festival was not held in May last year.
People said it would be delayed to October or November.
So I said, Oh, I have a few months to edit properly.
Does it matter to you at Cannes whether youre in the Official Selection?
All my friends go there, so its like a movie party.
I once went to Venice with the new cut ofIrreversible.
Its more shocking than the original one.
Whats the new version ofIrreversible?
Is it in chronological order now?Yeah.
I didnt add anything.
I even made it slightly shorter.
The original was very poetic because it had this concept of being told backwards.
But now it ends up in total shit.
Why did you do that?Because it was possible!
The truth is, if you see it, its more emotional, more dramatic, and …
I wouldnt say nihilistic, but evil wins at the end.
What did people think?Some people said, Ah, its your best movie ever!
Others said, No, I liked the original version because it has a hopeful note at the end.
Its very interesting to watch both movies.
But I understand why many more people like this.
When people scream or are pissed off, I enjoy it.
Bad reviews, like the really bad reviews, are very enjoyable.
Also now you’re free to find a photo of anybody just by their name.
We dont belong to the same family.
So seeing the photo or watching a video of the person who wrote the article makes you laugh.
What was your favorite bad review in the past?Oh, I had a few good ones forIrreversible.
Like, the new Marquis de Sade has arrived or stupidities of that kind.
Or calling me a Nazi homophobe or whatever.
I say, Dad!
Find me the address.
Well go and spit on his face!
Its almost like a joke.
Its ready to go to the garbage can.
Whats supposed to be the testament of his life is just going to the garbage can.
The truth is that there are technological developments that made the work of many cinema creators disappear.
Cinema ages very quickly, and it can disappear very quickly because of the ways it was distributed.
Most of the movies that have ever been shot and distributed are already disappearing.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
