I am delighted to meet you as I have been seeing you very often at festivals for the past few years such as Cannes or the Etrange Festival and even at screenings such as the press screening of Tenet by Christopher Nolan and the preview of Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky, at the MK2 Bibliothèque, where I was right next to you, in the front row.

"Black Swan. …ah yes, I remember, I arrived at the last minute with Darren….it was a good film. For Tenet , I was next to Philippe Rouyer [journalist and president of the French Film Critics Association, editor's note], it was in the 18th or 19th century theater…" GN

Have you increased your pace in the last five to seven years? That's somewhat the impression one might get when looking at your filmography.

"I haven't sped things up. It's just that I made a very complex film that took me six years, from preparation and shooting to editing, special effects, and post-production ( Enter the Void ). After that long-term experience, I realized I wouldn't have the energy to make films that consume four or five years of my time, with only one audience. So, since that film, I've started making films quickly, like when I shot Irreversible , which was actually my only major commercial success, in the sense that the film was profitable. So I tried to work on quick shoots of five weeks, three weeks, two weeks, five days… But I'm no more productive than when I made Enter the Void . I spend just as much time each week preparing for shoots. But I'm working on simpler projects that I can shoot faster, some films that are 2 hours and 20 minutes long, others that are 50-minute medium-length films. But I'm not like Fassbinder, he made four films a year…or like Mizoguchi, same thing. If I manage to make one film a year, I'm already happy with myself." GN

Fassbinder, he made more than forty films in twelve years….No, I was thinking more of Terrence Malick who started making films quite spaced out, five in forty years and then all of a sudden, from The Tree of Life onwards, he made a film every year or every two years.

"The Tree of Life may have revived his career. Perhaps he had production or financial guarantee problems before, I don't know, I'm not inside Terrence Malick's head. I haven't seen a single one of his films since The Tree of Life . But I know he's made a lot of films. Oh no, yes, I saw another one, Voyage of Time , which was superb, but I haven't seen his latest narrative films. Filmmakers sometimes have a very complicated internal or external mechanism. Films are made with money, which sometimes comes along and sometimes doesn't; actors sometimes disappear or come back, they're fashionable or not. It's a collective effort, filmmaking. Terrence Malick isn't a book or comic book author. For example, when I make films, I don't feel like a footballer fighting alone. It's a whole team effort. Film production is about being part of a team. I am fortunate to belong to the Wild Bunch team which, through Vincent Maraval, finances my films." GN

It seems that every year you also belong to the French team at the Cannes Film Festival, having presented almost all of your films there.

"Unfortunately, I won't be ready this year!" GN

Are you sure? Because for Love or Vortex, you weren't ready either, a priori….

"No, if they could postpone the Cannes Film Festival to July like last year or to September, that would be possible. But the timeframe is too short. I won't be presenting a film this year." GN

Why Vortex as a title?

"Vortex is a marine whirlpool, reminiscent of a space submarine, like a spiral leading to a bottomless pit. It's like a spaceship spiraling forward and ultimately crashing into a wall. Here, the wall represents death. So there's an existentialist aspect to calling this film Vortex . I could have called it Existence… At one point, the toilet is flushed, and like in a bathtub, when it's emptied, it creates a spiral. So it resembles a vortex. At another point, a marine vortex is visible in an excerpt from Tarkovsky's film Solaris." GN

When did you come up with the title?

"I came up with the title pretty quickly. We had a working title called Dementia , which had already been used, but it sounds a bit like a horror film, a bit too much like madness, like Suspiria . Dementia with Dario Argento, in a Gaspar Noé film—everyone's going to think it's a horror film. There's also Coppola's first film called Dementia 13. In French, the phenomenon is called senile dementia, and in English, it's called Dementia. But I now think Vortex is a better title. I was stunned because I rewatched Enter the Void last week , which I hadn't seen since I finished it, because I was offered the chance to do an audio commentary for the English-speaking audience, which I didn't want to do. And while watching the Blu-ray, there was a bonus feature called Vortex !" GN

Yes, that's true, I noticed it too, while watching Enter the Void, to prepare for the interview.

"It's a bonus feature where we'd gathered all the special effects shots that hadn't made it into the film—shots I thought were beautiful, which we'd strung together, creating these digital spirals, extremely pretty. But I didn't remember that we'd given all these uncut shots the name Vortex . So this is actually the second time I've used that title. I'd completely forgotten. When, during filming, I thought of calling the film Vortex , I thought it was a completely original idea, one I'd never had before. But I had! And it's unsettling that it echoes my own memory lapses, because I'd already used the title ten years earlier." GN

Yes, I also thought that Vortex was a title that could have been used for Enter the Void.

"Yes, in fact, I did use it in a way for this film. Anyway, there are plenty of other independent films, science fiction films, etc., called Vortex . Similarly, I've seen some called Climax , long before mine. You can't "copyright" a word. The same goes for Love , which has been used many times." GN

You came up with the title quite quickly, but it didn't inspire the form of the film.

"No, indeed, it did not inspire the form of the film, apart from the toilet shot or the Solaris excerpt ." GN

Dario Argento, I checked, is the first director you mention in your list of acknowledgments in the end credits of I Stand Alone.

"Wow! (laughs). It all fits together." GN

But how did you come to think of Dario Argento as an actor?

"I met Dario Argento at the Toronto Film Festival thirty years ago when I was showing my film Carne , and he was probably showing Trauma . We had dinner together, and I told him about my project to make a feature-length sequel. He had seen Carne and offered to produce it. We stayed in touch; he was so kind. He came to Paris many years later when I was editing Irreversible . We remained friends. I then became very close friends with Asia Argento, who would sometimes say to me, "  Oh, my father is in Paris, call him ." We had lunch and dinner together many times. He's someone I have an almost familial relationship with; we call each other for Christmas or New Year's. When I first had the idea for this film in January 2021, while writing the script and securing funding through Wild Bunch and Studio Canal, no one initially asked me who would play the male lead. And when they did ask, I replied that I would love to have "  someone like Dario Argento ." I had Françoise Lebrun as a reference for the role of the mother, and she had agreed to play it, provided she got along well with the man playing the husband. I then tried to convince Dario, who had some free time before directing his own film. And when he said yes, I thought, bingo, I've found the perfect couple, an ideal pairing of two individuals. They are both so touching that you just want to hug them both. And then I was happy to make a film with someone, Dario, with whom I knew I'd have fun during my lunch break because he's so incredibly nice. Aside from the fact that his films always create a thrill of horror, a sexual thrill in the audience, he's so likeable and funny that people love Dario Argento for who he is. Besides, his charisma is very evident in my film." GN

But didn't you think of another actor?

"No, I didn't think of another actor. I thought I should find another actor, but all the other ideas were really far inferior. Getting back to *I Stand Alone* , I thanked all the directors who had convinced me to make the film. I wrote a chapter titled "Acknowledgments to…" There are many, I think it includes Jacques Audiard, Tsukamoto, Christophe Gans… And Jan Kounen advised me to list them in alphabetical order. So, the first one that appears is Dario Argento. Alain Cavalier also helped me a lot with the editing, but since he was actively involved, I credited him separately." GN

The editing work in Vortex is quite astounding. The two parts of the split-screen really had to be perfectly aligned every time.

"Actually, the editing went quite quickly because the film, which I finished around mid-April, had to be shown at Cannes. Last year, the Festival wasn't in May, thankfully. So I was really focused on it, working around the clock. We didn't do that many takes of each shot because we tried to stick to an eight-hour-a-day schedule. You don't shoot this kind of film with older people for fourteen hours a day like you did with Climax , with 18- and 19-year-olds dancing and drinking… We were shooting five days a week, eight hours a day. We did very long takes that I edited later, but we didn't do many, just two, three, four. It was quite tiring, given the rather sad nature of the subject matter. The set was stifling, everyone wore masks, and since it was the Covid period, the Covid inspector was keeping an eye on everyone. So, once we finished filming, we were so relieved because it felt like spending days in a submarine at the bottom of the ocean, and finally we were seeing daylight. Nevertheless, the film was made with joy, perhaps not in euphoric conditions, but with mutual joy and good humor. The film itself is suffocating. This idea of ​​shooting the film in split-screen makes it richer. We follow the gaze from right to left and vice versa, and even though I wasn't sure about shooting the whole film in split-screen, I realized I had to. When characters separate, we would shoot one side first, edit it quickly, to figure out how long afterward the other character needed to return to the room so we could reconnect. So there were parts we shot with two cameras, others with one. But this particular scene had to be edited to determine how to occupy the other character during the minute or two they were separated. Therefore, the editing was done simultaneously with the film itself." GN

Split-screen is a technique you are using more and more. It seems that since Love, which serves as a sort of dividing line in your work – where you don't use split-screen – in the other subsequent films, Climax, Lux Aeterna and Vortex , it has become a recurring technique, in contrast to the previous films, Irreversible and Enter the Void, which worked mainly with long takes.

"Love was in 3D. Yes, actually, it's mainly about how the editing is done and how it showcases the cinematic language. For Irreversible , it was told in reverse and made up of long takes with a moving camera. It was about doing the opposite of what I did in I Stand Alone . I thought to myself, I have to change things up and have fun with the new film. So it was the opposite of I Stand Alone , except that it also had a lot of red and was rated R. After Irreversible , I made Enter the Void , and there was a lot more color, the editing was much faster. Formally, I had fun with a lot of things I'd never done before, like Pierre Buffin's special effects. The sheer number of special effects almost made me feel like I was co-directing the film with the head of special effects. It was a film unlike anything I'd ever made before. Then I thought, I'm going to make a sentimental, erotic film in 3D, because that's a language I've never used. We always try to change things up, to do something we've never done before. For Lux Aeterna, it was somewhat accidental that the film ended up in split-screen. I wanted to shoot it in long takes, but then I realized I wouldn't be able to, so I shot with two cameras and ended up with a lot of footage to edit. I enjoyed editing that film for five days with split screens. Then I made a mini short film inspired by Dario Argento, with a lot of red, the operatic feel… So I definitely had Dario Argento in mind. During the 2020 holidays, I found myself with my father [Luis Felipe Noé, painter, editor's note] who brought out a bottle of Argento wine (laughs)! Asia was there too. In January 2021, I had some debts to settle. Vincent Maraval and Edouard Weil asked me if I had any ideas for a film set entirely in one location, something we could make very quickly, in an apartment. I said yes, an idea close to what actually happened to me, and which could happen to anyone, namely my mother losing her mind. So, it was a project I could make if I found good actors. I talked to Dario Argento about it, but I thought it was impossible. Then the filming of his movie was postponed, and he became available. All that was left was to convince him. The film wasn't written; there were only ten pages. And so I went to see Françoise Lebrun, whom I had idolized since The Mother and the Whore ." GN

This is your film that is ostensibly the least provocative, and yet, in comparison to the rest of your work, it is perhaps your most provocative film.

"That's what my father says; he says it's my most violent film. The film is suitable for all audiences, but I think it's very violent for someone of a certain age. For someone ten or fifteen, it's an educational film, showing that old age is going to be like this. Young people leaving the screening tell me, "  Yes, it touched me, because I went through the same thing with my grandfather or grandmother ." Having gone through the same thing with my grandmother, and then later with my mother, it's not at all the same level of intimacy. When it's your mother, it's like a part of your body disappears, becomes ill. It's like your deepest self. While my grandmother's illness could amuse me, without being malicious, when it's your mother who no longer recognizes you, then you think, "Oh yeah, that's much more dramatic." It's true that old age is a difficult experience for everyone, except those who die young. It's a completely universal subject, and as a result, the harsh realities of old age, the side effects, are so very intense. And yet, people tell me, "  You were so prudish. My mother in a nursing home is so much worse; my father, we have to change his diapers, etc. " These are often people who were your childhood idols who are now falling apart. They have no future, unlike babies. They find themselves completely dependent, even for the most basic bodily needs." GN

How did you approach this subject in relation to a Michael Haneke film?

"Michael Haneke didn't invent old age! Nor did De Sica in Umberto D. or McCarey in Place aux jeunes . It's a universal subject. I saw Haneke's film, which I love, when my mother was very ill, on the verge of death. When I saw it at Cannes, I cried my eyes out. That film undoubtedly helped my own film get financed easily because it won the Palme d'Or, received awards everywhere, and did very well at the box office. So, it seems Haneke's film showed that this subject, which terrifies producers far more than incest, war, or rape, can be represented. There is a place for this collective taboo of old age. Many people tell me that my film could be summed up by Bette Davis's famous line, "  Old age is not for wimps ." My father says the same thing and adds: but you already need to have a strong heart to enter adulthood." GN

Haneke's film may also have been successful because of its title, as it has the same title as your film Love.

"Ah yes, that's right, I'd wanted to call my film Love for quite some time. I was hesitating between Love and Danger. When Haneke's film, Amour , came out, I thought it was all over, someone had stolen my title! Actually, it's just a word, and you can't "copyright" a word. My luck at the time was that in most countries, Amour kept its original title, which wasn't translated. It's only in Hungary where both titles were translated into Hungarian, and so it's the only territory where both films have the same title." GN

One last question: Vortex presents a very realistic and pessimistic view of life, and especially death. Has your perspective on life changed since Enter the Void, which offered hope for a possible afterlife?

"Enter the Void , contrary to appearances, is not actually a film about reincarnation at all. When the child is born, it comes out of its own mother's womb. In the final sequence, it's not the sister who gives birth, it's not Linda. It's the mother who gives birth, and so the main character remembers his own birth. It's not a film about reincarnation. It's a film about the hallucination of someone who was shot in a bar. There is no reincarnation. I don't believe in reincarnation or astral travel at all. At the end of the film, the face is a little blurry, but it's actually the face of Oscar's mother that we see." GN

Interview conducted in Paris on April 5, 2022 By David Speranski.

https://movierama.fr/entretien-avec-gaspar-noe-pour-vortex-je-ne-crois-pas-en-la-reincarnation/