Argentine director Gasper Noé thrives on controversy. It’s an essential part of his filmmaking style. He loves to push boundaries and, for lack of a better word, torture his audiences. What he isn’t known for is having rocking soundtracks in his films. Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk, who previously worked with Noé on “Irreversible” and “Enter the Void,” has contributed an original song to the director’s new film “Climax,” titled “Sangria.” Also on the soundtrack of “Climax” is his unreleased song “What to Do” and Daft Punk’s “Rollin’ and Scratchin’.”
Music plays a huge role in “Climax.” The film follows an urban dance troupe and is said to include some of the most stylish filmmaking of the entire festival, where he shows the group of dancers rehearse and perform routines with the pulsing electronic music in the background. Of course, being that this is a Noé film, we know that everything isn’t going to proceed as planned for the troupe, and quickly the film turns from a beautiful dance piece into what is being described as a descent into hell.
READ MORE: Gaspar Noé’s ‘Climax’: An Orgy Of Sex, Drugs, Horror & Death [Cannes Review]
“Climax” was featured as part of the Directors’ Fortnight, and ended up walking away with the Art Cinema Award.
A24 picked up the distribution for “Climax.”
Read the premise for the film below.
In the mid 90’s, 20 urban dancers join together for a three-day rehearsal in a closed-down boarding school located at the heart of a forest to share one last dance. They then make one last party around a large sangria bowl. Quickly, the atmosphere becomes charged and a strange madness will seize them the whole night. If it seems obvious to them that they have been drugged, they neither know by who nor why. And it’s soon impossible for them to resist to their neurosises and psychoses, numbed by the hypnotic and the increasing electric rythm of the music… While some feel in paradise, most of them plunge into hell.