Rarely has a film poster so perfectly condensed the spirit of a film and the personality of its director. Designed by poster artist Laurent Lufroy, the main poster for Climax immediately strikes you with its visual intensity: a large, incandescent red rectangle, bodies suspended in mid-air seen from above, and a typographic slogan that hits like a punch.

A plunge into the heart of chaos...



At first glance, the viewer is captivated by the central composition: a low-angle shot of a group of dancers in a trance, their bodies scattered, almost disjointed. This plunging perspective crushes the figures and gives the impression that the celebration—the film's subject—is plunging into an infernal abyss. We are not witnessing a static scene, but rather a movement, a spiral, a whirlwind of energy poised to burst from the frame.

Red as a state of permanent alert...

There's no escaping the color: red dominates the entire poster. It simultaneously evokes passion, blood, trance, but also danger. More than a simple aesthetic choice, this saturated hue reflects the gradual rise of unease in the film, where a dance party turns into a collective nightmare. Red is also the nightclub's lights, the inner fire of bodies, the visual warning that tells the viewer: "Prepare yourselves, you are entering an extreme zone."

Gaspar Noé initially envisioned a fold-out poster for the Cannes press kit, with an ironic tone reminiscent of the criticism his previous films had received. The slogan, "You despised I Stand Alone, hated Irreversible, loathed Enter the Void, cursed Love, come celebrate Climax," is its key textual expression. It was Laurent Lufroy, his longtime poster designer, who took this idea and created a powerful visual, blending personal history with graphic provocation.

The poster conveys the film's sensory chaos through a red, organic, and fiery aesthetic, perfectly capturing the unsettling atmosphere of the party turning into a nightmare. The typography, combined with the visuals, plays on irony and cultural references, notably to the French flag—reminiscent of the red, white, and blue curtains featured in the film.

The Noé–Lufroy collaboration is profoundly synergistic: Lufroy designs the poster with a keen understanding of Noé's provocative gaze, while remaining faithful to it graphically and intellectually.