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Vortex (2021)

Vortex (2021)

A haunting ode to love, death, and everything in between

8.6

Movie

Belgium, France
French
Drama
2021
GASPAR NOÉ
Alex Lutz, Corinne Bruand, Dario Argento
142 min

What it's about

Lui, a struggling author with a heart condition, and his wife Elle, a retired psychiatrist, find their idyllic life shattered when Elle begins to succumb to the effects of dementia.

The take

Vortex, Gaspar Noé’s haunting exploration of death and dementia, begins with a dedication: “to all those whose brains will decompose before their hearts.” The statement sets the heartwrenching tone of the film, which follows an elderly couple—one with dementia and the other with a heart ailment—during their last days together. Noé cleverly depicts all this in a split-screen design, which evokes the fractured pattern of old-age thought. 

Noé’s mother struggled with dementia, and Noé’ himself suffered from a brain hemorrhage that nearly killed him, so Vortex is clearly a personal film. But even without knowing this, Vortex feels effortlessly dear and deeply intimate, like it could've only been done by a person with a first-hand experience of this tragedy. At once personal and universal, Vortex is a haunting and inventive ode to love, death, and everything in between.

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