Lux Æterna (2019)

Director: Gaspar Noé
Stars: Béatrice Dalle, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Abbey Lee
Runtime: minutes

Synopsis: Two actresses, Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg, are on a film set telling stories about witches - but that's not all. 'Lux Æterna' is also an essay on cinema, the love of film, and on-set hysterics.

Verdict: Those familiar with Gaspar Noé’s body of work will tell you that the French filmmaker’s strengths don’t lie in his storytelling abilities. The scripts he works on are often only a few pages long, and he’s known in the industry to heavily rely on his crew’s improvisation skills to carry his projects. He has perfected imperfection so well that his movies always push the boundaries of filmmaking, providing the audience with an unforgettable experience that some adore, some loathe, but none forget.

Just like the rest of his filmography, “Lux Æterna” is guaranteed to divide moviegoers. It may have an unusually short runtime of 51 minutes, but Noé makes the most out of it by crafting a nightmarish meta experience that entirely takes place on a hectic movie set. The tense atmosphere was constructed with a peculiar use of colors, music, and, most notably, a screen split that gradually intensified the film’s pacing until it reached its climax during the highly uncomfortable final 10 minutes. Closing minutes I’d recommend any photosensitive person to skip if they want to avoid suffering from an epileptic episode.

With its many religious allegories and commandment-like intertitles, “Lux Æterna” represents Noé at perhaps his most pretentious as his God complex and filmmaking doctrines are the movie’s main themes. This may understandably throw off many people, but I find this direction to tune up the crazy that the director’s known for even if I don’t necessarily agree with some of his harsh statements.

“Lux Æterna” is a piece of experimental Cinema that I can see growing in popularity over the years. It’s subjective art at its best and worst simultaneously, which makes for a divisive but unique event that I couldn’t help but revisit as soon as I finished my first watch.

FINAL GRADE: 8/10