Climax · reception & legacy

2018 · Gaspar Noé

How Climax has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

The twist with Climax was that critics who'd spent two decades recoiling from Noé mostly embraced it on arrival — it premiered at Cannes' Directors' Fortnight in 2018, won the Art Cinema Award, and was widely called his best film. Since then it's settled in as the consensus 'gateway Noé,' the one people recommend to newcomers.

What's debated

The perennial fight: is it a hypnotic sensory experience or just an edgelord's style-over-substance endurance test — with a side debate over whether the first half-hour of dancing is so good the descent that follows can't top it.

Its footprint

The opening dance number — one unbroken take choreographed to Cerrone's 'Supernature' — is endlessly clipped, gif'd and shared, arguably more famous than the film around it, and it cemented the sangria bowl as shorthand for a party about to go very wrong.

Where it stands

A Letterboxd-era midnight-movie favourite and the standard entry point into Noé — the one even his skeptics concede.

★ Did you know? The cast is almost entirely real dancers with no acting experience — Sofia Boutella was essentially the only professional actor — and Noé shot the film in about 15 days working from a script that was only a few pages long, with the dialogue largely improvised.

Named by the director

Influences Gaspar Noé has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

Possession (1981) — Noé displays the VHS on-screen in Climax's shelf of influences and has repeatedly named Żuławski's film a touchstone for its ecstatic, convulsive performances.
Suspiria (1977) — Among the VHS tapes Noé literally shows framing the TV as a declared influence — Argento's dance-academy nightmare is Climax's most obvious ancestor.
Angst (1983) — Gerald Kargl's film sits on the influence shelf; Noé has long cited it as a favourite that shaped his roving-camera style.
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) — Another of the tapes Noé places on-screen as an avowed reference point for collective cruelty.
Un Chien Andalou (1929) — Shown among the VHS influences — Buñuel's surrealist shock is part of the lineage Noé claims for the film.
Querelle (1982) — Fassbinder's film appears on the declared-influence shelf Noé built into the movie's opening.