Gaspar Noé’s ‘Climax’

Nick Pinkerton at Artforum:

GASPAR NOÉ’S CLIMAX is an encyclopedia of ways in which the human body can bend and break, a sailor’s knot guide of the contortions possible with four limbs, a trunk, and a head, skulls seemingly empty here of thoughts other than sex and death. Set in an isolated school somewhere outside of Paris where a troupe of hip-hop dancers have assembled for intensive rehearsals before an impending American tour, the movie unravels in something like real-time as, cutting loose at the end of a day’s work, they dip into a punchbowl of sangria before discovering that one of their group has spiked it with LSD, precipitating a collective freak-out.

The film opens with a premonition of catastrophe: an indifferent-God’s-eye-view of a bloodied young woman wading through a field of snow before collapsing and flailingly tracing an angel in the powder.

more here.