By GRACE DETWILER
Starring Béatrice Dalle, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Abbey Lee
Written and Directed by Gaspar Noé
Yellow Veil Pictures
Perhaps best known for his controversial 2002 New French Extremity film Irréversible, more recent converts to the cult of Gaspar Noé were won over by the hysteria-inducing horror of Climax (2018). And now, the most recent release from the Argentine director, LUX ÆTERNA, will finally be available for public consumption after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019. Thanks to Yellow Veil Pictures, the meditation on filmmaking, fashion, the respective roles of actors and directors, and – oddly enough – the burning of suspected witches in medieval France, will see a limited theatrical release this month, followed by a full digital and collector’s edition home video release later in the year.
Produced by the French luxury fashion house Yves Saint Laurent, LUX ÆTERNA straddles the line between short, feature film, and fashion editorial at a slim 51-minute runtime. As Noé himself puts it, “Anthony [Vaccarello, Creative Director at Saint Laurent] proposed to support me if I had any idea for a short film. Two weeks later, in five days, we improvised this modest essay about beliefs and the art of filmmaking. Now the 51-minute baby is ready to scream…Thank God, cinema is light flashing 24 frames per second.” Noé is being literal here; LUX ÆTERNA opens with a warning cautioning epileptics against watching the film due to its strobe effects…followed by a Dostoevsky quote hailing the “supreme happiness” and “felicity” of epileptic fits. Make of that what you will.
But make no mistake, not unlike Climax’s psychotic exploration of the contemporary dance world, LUX ÆTERNA is equal parts horror and equal parts philosophy of art and its industry. Starring legendary French actors Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg, LUX ÆTERNA utilizes split screens and innovative aspect ratios to depict extemporaneous conversations between the two women combined with cinematic recreations of the methods of persecution and torture historically used in European witch-hunting. In the second half, however, the ‘film within the film’ being discussed by Dalle and Gainsbourg begins shooting, and the production devolves into chaos for the cast and crew when the lights begin strobing uncontrollably on set.
Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg
LUX ÆTERNA may be short, but it is certainly sweet – a must-see for horror cinephiles and lovers of experimental international cinema alike. Most remarkable about LUX ÆTERNA is undoubtedly its effective commentary on sexism in the film industry, straight from the lips of actresses who have surely seen a great deal of it. An odd coincidence then, that LUX ÆTERNA’s release coincides with that of A24’s MEN – another film by a male quasi-auteurist with a feminist bent. LUX ÆTERNA successfully manages to shine a critical and strobing light on the abuse of actresses by directors, the violation of young actresses’ contracts, as well as conflicts in creative control between producers and filmmakers. Frosted with a wardrobe courtesy of Yves Saint Laurent, watching LUX ÆTERNA is like eating a small slice of a very rich cake.
LUX ÆTERNA had its initial theatrical opening in New York on May 6th and opened in Los Angeles on May 13th, before expanding throughout the U.S. and Canada on the 20th. Also seeing a wide release this year is the director’s Cannes 2021 premiere Vortex which details the last days of an elderly couple stricken by dementia in Noé’s signature style.
