Interview: Gaspar Noé

One of the most essential directors working today, French filmmaker Gaspar Noé has made another transgressive classic – and the best movie I have seen this year – in his latest effort, Climax. Based loosely on real events from the mid-’90s, the movie focuses on a French dance troupe whose post-rehearsal party spirals off into violent horror, when the punch bowl they’re collectively drinking from is spiked with LSD. Soundtracked by some of the best electronic artists of the ’90s, including Aphex Twin and Noe’s friends Daft Punk, the movie has a powerful, visceral quality characteristic of the director’s work – like David Fincher, he aims to scar.

Nonethless, he is a notably personable interviewee. Indeed, when I start off by telling him Climax is my favourite film of the year, he immediately asks if I’ve seen Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno, the new film from Abdellatif Kechiche – director of the P’alme Dor-winning erotic drama Blue Is The Warmest Colour. “Mektoub is three hours long and I thought it was so touching,” says Noé, displaying his customary enthusiasm for cinema, as he speaks down the line from London. “It’s about young kids in their twenties, and they’re hanging out on the beach in summer. The main character is a film student who wants to be a photographer. It’s about boys using girls and vice versa, but the whole film is so moving – it’s probably based on the director’s own adolescence.” After viewing Climax, I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe if it was actually based on a real story, but Noé explains the initial inspiration did indeed come from a newspaper article. “There are stories that you read that are unsolved situations,” he notes. “But you don’t want to take the actual names of the people. It’s based on a real situation and at the same time it’s not – the choreography is improvised and so are lots of other elements. I remember how shocking that story was, and you still see documentaries and other stuff about it.  “I was actually working on other screenplays based on more famous stories, but then you have to be super-accurate with the names and so on, because if it’s your interpretation people can complain. It’s much better to get inspired by a story and then do your own thing.” Early in the movie, some text appears on screen saying “French movie and proud of it”, while the party DJ simultaneously spins tunes in front of the country’s flag. I wonder if Noé intended the film to be a commentary on some aspect of French life? “I just thought it was cool,” replies Gaspar. “I’m very happy to be considered a French filmmaker, because you have much more freedom there than in other places. Usually, a movie talks through its characters and its storyline, so it’s very weird for a film to talk on its own behalf.

I would say it was a joke – I knew it would amuse a lot of people. I had already shot the scene with the flag, and then I thought, ‘Well, why wouldn’t the movie be proud of being French?’  “Actually, it’s the kind of thing people ask me. When I did Enter The Void, people asked me if I me was a Buddhist. And I’d say, ‘No, I have a phobia to religion.’ In France, we say ‘Atheist and proud of it.’ So it kind of comes from that.” The spiking of the punch with LSD is of course central to the story in Climax, and drugs have played in central part in Noé’s movies, from the hallucinogenic feel of Enter The Void to the narcotic-fuelled erotic haze of Love.    Has he ever tried acid himself? “A few times when I was a teenager,” responds Gaspar. “I mean, even before I took it, I read a lot about it and found out what was safe. But I’m not an expert on LSD.” You did say in an interview before that you’ve had some great experiences on drugs. “Well, I’ve had everything,” says Noé. “I’ve had good moments and some not so good moments. Sometimes when I was a teenager, I’d smoke a joint and very quickly it would shift from good to bad. Then other occasions, if a lot of time had gone by since I last smoked, I’d have a bad feeling.    “The same thing happened with alcohol – the first time I tried sangria when I was a teenager, I thought it was great. But later, when you’re 17 or 18, you start mixing Vodka with rum and you feel sick. If you do things on a small scale and in the right context, it can be enjoyable. Mostly, alcohol is good when you have two or three glasses – after that, your IQ drops very quickly.    “I’ve been very stupid a few times in my life because I drank too much. And I’ve also seen other people around me get very stupid in bars. But Climax is very much a movie about losing control.”

Certainly, the finale of the movie is hellish, with each of the protagonists adrift in their own mental torment. In an especially memorable scene, one of the female dancers – after freaking out in a side room – wanders in a daze through the nightmarish milieu, all while Aphex Twin’s classic ‘Windowlicker’ is twisted into frightening new shapes in the background.    Sound design and music are essential to Noé’s films; famously, on Irreversible– which was scored by Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter – he used a low-frequency noise throughout the movie’s finale to keep the audience on edge.   “Well, with Climax, because it’s about dancers, I wanted to have the best dance music from the ’80s and ’90s,” says Gaspar. “I was so happy that we could use the instrumental version of ‘Supernature’ by Cerrone, and also the instrumental version of ‘Born To Be Alive’, which was a teenage favourite of mine. In addition, two of my favourite techno songs ever are ‘Windowlicker’ and Daft Punk’s ‘Rollin’ And Scratchin’’. When it came to getting the rights, the managers of both Aphex Twin and Daft Punk were so friendly to us.    “To me, they’re the two best songs of the ’90s. We had a screening of the movie yesterday and Aphex Twin was actually supposed to come, but unfortunately he didn’t make it. I’d love to meet him though. With Daft Punk, they are friends – Thomas particularly, as he did the music for Irreversible, and also created a lot of cool noises for Enter The Void. These days they split their time between LA and Paris. “They pushed the label to accept our conditions for using the song. Also, Thomas gave me a recording he made in the ’90s that he hadn’t used – it’s the one that opens the second part of the movie, when you see the sangria and they notice that it’s been spiked with something. The track didn’t have a title, but because of the scene it’s used in, it’s now being released under the name ‘Sangria’.” I first became a fan of Noe due to his championing by fellow punk auteur Harmony Korine, writer of Kids and director of the underground classic Gummo. A few years back, I finally got around to checking out Irreversible, which remains one of the controversial films of recent years. Described by Roger Ebert as “a movie so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable”, the shocking thriller tells – in reverse chronological order, as per the title – the story of two men (Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel) out to avenge the brutal rape of a girlfriend (played by Cassel’s then real-life partner Monica Bellucci).  A nihilistic dive into the most sordid depths of Parisian nightlife, Irreversible was greeted in some quarters as nothing less than an affront to society, with the attendant walkouts and condemnation. Essentially the Clockwork Orange of the noughties, it quickly became one of my favourite movies. When I tell Noé that I put it in a list of my top ten films on a Facebook post a while back, the director – ever the cinephile – asks what the other nine were, in case he’s missed any. Straining to remember, I mention there was a Kubrick film on there. “Was it 2001?” he interrupts, referring to the sci-fi classic that – along with Pasolini’s scandalous Salo – is his favourite movie.

Actually it was Full Metal Jacket. “You prefer it to 2001?!” asks an incredulous Noé. “I do have to say, Full Metal Jacket was an influence on the structure of Climax – the first half builds up to an event and then you have the aftermath. You know that in the original ending of Full Metal Jacket, the soldiers cut off the sniper’s head and played football with it. Possibly after the lukewarm commercial reaction to some of his films – particularly Barry Lyndon – Kubrick didn’t want to risk it. But I think it would have made the movie so much more violent and powerful. I’d love to see it with that ending.” Finally, to go back to Irreversible, it would probably be even more controversial if it were released today. Would Noé still make it now – or is its controversial nature an even better reason to make it? “I don’t know, most of the movies I put in my own top ten were considered controversial when they first came out,” he considers. “Taxi Driver, Salo, Fassbinder’s movies – even a movie that should have had a consensus around it, like 2001, was trashed by half the press when it was released. Then there’s An Andalusian Dog as well… some movies, they’re not so much ahead of their time, but they’re ahead of the reception of the time. “For instance, in Irreversible, there’s nothing that hasn’t been done before. You take things from other movies, from your life, from documentaries and you make a new mix out of the different elements. You try to compete with your idols, not the present time.”

Climax is released on September 21.