‘Lux Æterna’ Review: Gaspar Noé Takes Audiences on a Witchy, Twitchy Backstage Tour
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film CriticCinema is such a costly medium that directors have little chance to experiment between features.
It’s not like music or painting — relatively low-cost art forms whose practitioners can try new techniques in the secret obscurity of their studios until their bold ideas are ready to be shared with the world in polished form.
Making movies takes a crew, and equipment, and actors; all of that takes money, which in turn obliges directors to do their R&D in public, on projects that critics can and do hold up to unfair scrutiny.A few workarounds exist, including commercials and music videos, through which such film artists as David Lynch, Sofia Coppola and Wes Anderson have refined their craft, but if they’re not careful, taking such gigs can look like selling out.
This brings us to Gaspar Noé’s 2019 oddity “Lux Æterna,” which is not a film in the conventional sense but a work-for-hire gone awry — although in Noé’s case, “awry” is the best (and likely only) way for things to go, living up to the kind of creative chaos fans have come to expect from the “Irreversible” auteur.
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