French Dance Horror Movie
Do Kieu
Climax is a 2018 horror film directed, written and co-edited by Gaspar No.[7] Featuring an ensemble cast of 24 actors, led by Sofia Boutella, the plot is set in 1996 and follows a French dance troupe holding a days-long rehearsal in an abandoned school; the final night of rehearsing is a success, but the group's celebratory after-party takes a dark turn when the communal bowl of sangria is spiked with LSD, sending each of the dancers into agitated, confused and psychotic states.
The film is notable for its unorthodox production, having been conceived and pre-produced in four weeks and shot in chronological order in only 15 days: although No conceived the premise, the bulk of the film was unrehearsed on-the-spot improvisation by the cast, who were provided no lines of dialogue beforehand and had almost complete liberty as to where to take the story and characters. Climax features unusual editing and cinematography choices, and includes several long takes, including one lasting over 42 minutes. The cast of the film consists almost exclusively of dancers who, aside from Boutella and Souheila Yacoub, had no previous acting experience.
Climax premiered on 10 May 2018 in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Art Cinema Award. It was theatrically released in France on 19 September 2018 by Wild Bunch and in Belgium on 21 November 2018 by O'Brother Distribution. The film received positive reviews, with much praise for its direction, cinematography, soundtrack, choreography and performances, although some criticized its violence and perceived lack of story.
In the winter of 1996, a professional French dance troupe, led by manager Emmanuelle and choreographer Selva, gathers in a rural, abandoned school to rehearse an upcoming performance. After succeeding in completing the elaborate closing piece of the dance, the group commence a celebratory after-party, dancing and drinking sangria made by Emmanuelle, while Goth Daddy provides music. The diverse group has several personal issues and share gossip about one another during the celebration.
As the party progresses, the dancers get increasingly agitated and confused. When Psych urinates on the floor, Selva begins to realize that something is wrong and that everybody is behaving strangely. The dancers eventually come to the conclusion that the sangria has been spiked with a hallucinogen, presumably LSD. At first they accuse Emmanuelle since she made the drink, but she points out that she drank it and is also suffering from its effects. Taylor, already resentful towards Omar for dating his sister Gazelle, points out that Omar, a teetotaler, has not touched the sangria and accuses him of being the one responsible. The group gets angry and locks him outside the building in freezing conditions.
Emmanuelle sees her young son, Tito, drinking the sangria and locks him inside an electrical room to protect him from the agitated dancers. Selva goes to the room of her friend Lou, who is also feeling ill despite not having drunk. Lou confesses that she did not drink because she is pregnant. Dom, strongly affected by the drug, enters the room, accuses Lou of spiking the drink and kicks her several times in the stomach, not believing her claim of being pregnant; Lou, injured, retching, and weeping, passes through an altercation between Alaia and Jennifer in the kitchen due to Jennifer's refusal to share her cocaine, during which Jennifer's hair is set aflame after Alaia pushes her against a portable stove.
A frenzied Lou confronts Dom on the dance floor, but the group, all heavily affected by the LSD at this point, turns on her and accuse her of having spiked the drink. At first taking up a knife to defend herself, the taunts of the group cause Lou to have a breakdown, and she ends up punching herself in the stomach and slashing herself with the knife on her face and arm as the group encourages her to kill herself, before being comforted by Eva.
Selva, hearing screams, forces herself to walk through the building in her drug-addled, hallucinatory state and finds Emmanuelle, who has lost the key to the electric room in which Tito is locked and is screaming for help due to hallucinations. While Emmanuelle desperately searches, Selva sees Taylor and a group brutally beating David, who has spent the night talking about and approaching women salaciously. When the school suddenly loses electricity and switches to red emergency lighting, someone laughingly shouts that Tito has electrocuted himself.
Ivana drags a heavily hallucinating Selva through the halls passing a distraught Eva in a shower, trying to wash off the blood from Lou's cuts. Entering Ivana's room, the two take shelter and begin to have sex. A distraught David stumbles upon the two and is kicked out by Selva. David tries to enter DJ Daddy's room but is also evicted. Rejected, David encounters Gazelle and her brother Taylor, starting to have sex. Gazelle flees from Taylor and stumbles into the central hall where the remaining dancers have descended into drug-induced psychosis, dancing wildly, writhing on the floor, chanting in tongues, having sex, and physically assaulting one another. Taylor catches up to Gazelle and professes his love to her, telling her only he can make her happy as she cries. Gazelle has a seizure and Taylor takes her to his room while David is attacked by another dancer who slams his head against the floor.
When police arrive the next morning, they find almost all of the dancers either unconscious or dead. Psych continues to dance alone. Dom is curled up alone, sobbing. Omar has frozen to death outside while Emmanuelle has killed herself outside the electrical room out of grief. Tito's corpse lies beside the open door of the electrical junction cabinet. Gazelle wakes up next to Taylor, seemingly having forgotten the evening as Taylor instructs her not to say anything to their father. Eva is curled up naked in the shower cubicle. Jennifer is splashing water on her burned scalp, screaming. Lou exits the building, and writhes outside in the snow, laughing uncontrollably, having gone insane.
As the police search the building, Psych, who has several books related to hallucinogens in her bag, and apparently suffering no ill effects from the acid, goes to her room and drops liquid LSD into her eye.
The film was cast over the month of January 2018. It was mostly made of dancers with no acting experience, as No found the cast himself mostly in ballrooms, krumping battles, or on the internet. As vogue and krumping are largely individual dances, most of the cast had no experience dancing as a group, or in synchronization.[9] When asked about the casting process for the film, Noe said "I went to see some voguing ballrooms and krump battles, and I was hypnotized by their body language. These guys, who are usually very poor, become stars onstage once a month in a ballroom or in a battle."[15]
The film's choreographer, Nina McNeely, is the one who had the idea of casting Sofia Boutella.[11] The only cast members with acting experience were Sofia Boutella and Souheila Yacoub; Boutella had been a dancer for many years, although she had stopped dancing a few years before, and agreed to do it again for the film.[9] One of the cast members was a contortionist in Congo whom No had heard of when searching for unusual dancers, and got into touch with before flying him to France.[10] An agent brought up Yacoub when No asked for a dancer who would be "able to scream and shout on demand [...] I met her and we did a quick casting to see how much she could scream and dance... and she was excellent and I was like can you start on Monday... she thought I was joking at first." He recognized that the characters played by Boutella and Yacoub "would have been too hard [for] someone who is not really an actor, as they were more complicated psychologically."[8]
After the opening scene and the audition tapes, the plot of the film starts with a long take lasting over 12 minutes, with the first five minutes consisting of a fully choreographed dance by the cast. The choreography had also not been rehearsed before shooting, with the cast improving the dance and adding to it with each take, with the help of McNeely and the rest of the crew. They eventually filmed sixteen takes, with the fifteenth being the one used in the film; No stated that the final two takes were the only ones good enough to be used.[10][13] Another long take central to the film lasts over 42 minutes, almost half of the film's running time; No stated that "I was operating the camera but I had no idea how I was going to frame the scenes until immediately before I was on the set. I especially wanted the second half of the movie to be one continuous master shot, but how it was going to be I had no idea."[9][13]
There was no clear ending in mind while the actors were improvising. According to No, the only narrative directive given to the cast about the end of the story was that "the most fragile ones would die at the end! Only the strong survive."[9] The interview tapes featured early in the film were not originally planned, but No's line producer suggested that the cast should have talked more in the film, and came up with the idea of interviewing them for possible extra footage for the home media release; it was eventually added to the film. Those scenes were also completely improvised.[8]
The film was released in France on 19 September 2018 by Wild Bunch Distribution and in Belgium on 21 November 2018 by O'Brother Distribution. It was released in the United Kingdom on 21 September 2018 by Arrow Films, and in the United States on 1 March 2019 by A24.[19][20][21][22]
For the premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, the promotional material for the film humorously addressed the polarising responses and controversies surrounding No's previous films, stating: "You despised I Stand Alone, hated Irrversible, execrated Enter the Void, cursed Love, come celebrate Climax."[11]A limited stock of 100 VHS copies of the film was sold by A24.
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