French Kisses

Climax-Gaspar Noé 2018

While I was enjoying my usual 3AM snack of Pot Noodle (heavy on the Tabasco) and a wee glass or three of Absinthe (absolutely with the sugar-cube) before retiring, I did a little more research on Gaspar Noé new movie, Climax, the subject of my last post, and as well as discovering the reason why he decided to set the movie in 1996, (because 96 is the opposite of 69 and is therefore the year of collective impossibility, whereas 69 was the year of, yes you guessed correctly, coming together), I was delighted to find the complete playlist of the soundtrack, and oh boy, it is definitely killer.

This is to be expected, however, as whatever faults Noé possesses, his soundtracks have always shown impeccable taste. The opening credit sequence of Enter The Void combines elements of the soundtrack of Noé’s 2002 movie Irréversible, composed by regular collaborator Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk, with LFO’s Freak to produce a dazzling marriage of sound and flashing graphics that was immediately imitated in the music video field.

The stand out track of the above-mentioned soundtrack from Irréversible is Rectum, which takes its title from the hellish nightclub featured in the movie. Rectum is an aural distillation of pure dread; nervy, queasy and ever building, a perfect realisation of the demented Boschian world portrayed.

As Climax is a dance movie set in 1996, electronic, house, techno and industrial music from the 80’s and 90’s naturally features heavily, including songs by Gary Numan, Aphex Twin, Daft Punk and Giorgio Moroder as well as the Rolling Stones. I have included below two tracks, Lil Louis’s seminal Chicago House track French Kiss, which includes some of the heaviest and sexiest deep breathing on record since Serge Gainsborough’s Je t’aime, and Soft Cell’s combined cover of two Northern Soul classics Tainted Love and Where Did Our Love Go. 

Please note that the clip for Enter the Void contains flashing images and I hope you enjoy, though probably best to avoid if you have been drinking Sangria.

Climax

Climax-Gaspar Noé 2018

Regular readers may have noticed that I tend to be somewhat fixated on the art, literature and film of the past, rarely does anything post-1980 featured on these pages, and certainly not movies that I haven’t even seen yet. However, as the premise of Gaspar Noé‘s new movie, Climax, which recently premiered in Cannes, actually made me pause during my favourite early afternoon breakfast of Black Forest Gateau and original Irn-Bru, I decided to make an exception this one time.

Billed as a dance-horror movie (who knew there was such a thing?), Climax, which is apparently based on true events, tells the story of a young street dance troupe’s descent into collective madness after drinking the LSD-laced Sangria during the final rehearsal party, all filmed in Noé’s seizure inducing visual style and with his trademark horror-porno aesthetic. Described as The Red Shoes on literal acid, Step Up meets Salo and a Satanic DJ set, any minuscule reservations I had about leaving Chateau Du Cake to see this in the movie theatres when released are dispelled by the trailer, featured below.

 

 

The Void

Yves Klein-Leap Into The Void 1960-Photograph by Harry Shunk & Jean Kender

As I have noted in my previous posts (Fire & Dreams of Desire 48 (Blue) on the French artist Yves Klein his entire body of work is devoted to the concept of the void. As well as the beautiful blue monochromes (inspired by the pellucid light of his birthplace, the Cote d’Azur) painted in his own patented colour International Klein Blue which conveys the pregnant emptiness of both eternity and infinity, and the Fire paintings saturated with esoteric doctrine, Klein also organised an exhibition in 1958 called Le Vide (The Void) that consisted of a empty gallery room painted entirely in white, and the photo-montage Leap Into The Void.

Leap Into the Void was an artistic action executed in 1960 involving Klein jumping from a building onto a tarpaulin held by his friends at ground level. He commissioned the photographers Harry Shunk and Jean Kender to create the seamless photo-montage that gives the impression of flight and a wilful, ecstatic abandon. To further the illusion of flight  Klein distributed a fake news-sheet to Parisian newsstands commemorating the event of the Man in Space! The Painter of Space Throws Himself into the Void!.

In contrast to Klein’s monochromatic mystical void, the Argentinian director Gaspar Noe, one of the most notable figures of the New French Extremity, fills the void with sound and fury in his crazed Freudian psycho-drama Enter The Void. A bold, brilliant and often infuriating, psychedelic exploration of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the void for Noe is a state of mind, death and the return to the source. Below is the frenetic opening credits which Noe condensed as he considered that the film was already too long. Please note that it contains flashing images throughout.