Climax review: Gaspar Noé at his most fiery and original

The filmmaker creates a chamber piece that takes traditional dance movie elements and pushes them to crazy extremes

Dir: Gaspar Noé; Starring: Sofia Boutella, Romain Guillermic, Souheila Yacoub, Kiddy Smile. Cert 18, 96 mins

Gaspar Noé’s latest feature is an exhilarating affair, a film about a group of dancers in a nightclub whose initially blissful evening turns very dark and violent after somebody spikes the Sangria with LSD. The concept is simple – in the course of one eventful night, the dancers are taken from heaven to hell. Noé tackles his material with enormous relish.

The dance-off that we see early in the film, in which the characters compete with one another to show off their best moves, is filmed and performed with a manic energy that puts Gene Kelly’s collaborations with Stanley Donen to shame.

Noé’s dialogue, as the characters bitch and bicker among themselves or share their sexual fantasies, is obscene but frequently very witty. The film, which is loosely based on a real-life incident, has the feel of a crime mystery too. Nobody knows who spiked the cocktails.

Most of the actors are unknowns – dancers recruited by Noé in auditions. The one biggish name in the movie is the lithe and pouting Algerian-born actress, Sofia Boutella, who appeared as the villain opposite Tom Cruise as The Mummy and as the lethal, high-kicking assassin alongside Jodie Foster in Hotel Artemis.

Like all the other performers, she not only gets to show off her dance skills but is called on to perform as if she is off her head on drugs – a challenge she rises to with commendable élan.

Climax can’t keep up the raucous energy of its opening scenes. As the story gets progressively darker, it begins to feel claustrophobic and a little oppressive. The charm of its protagonists gradually wears off the more erratic their behaviour becomes.

Nonetheless, this is provocative and often bravura filmmaking – a chamber piece which takes traditional dance movie elements and pushes them to crazy extremes. Noé, who is now in his mid-50s, has been called the bad boy of French cinema almost since the day his career began. Climax shows him at his most fiery and original.

‘Climax’ is in cinemas from 21 September