A distinctly "less than" answer to last year's Suspiria, this new vision is nevertheless an intoxicating descent into artistic hell. It's also really hard to talk about, because so much of the film is experimental and experiential. It doesn't make much sense when you attempt to describe it. We will try.
We begin with a stark overhead image of a lone character crawling through snow, leaving bloodstains in his wake. Then the end credits roll across the screen. If you're confused yet, you're exactly right. We jump suddenly and without warning to a television screen, on which plays a series of audition tapes in which interviewees are asked questions about their artistry and careers. The questions become more personal -- about their fears, sexuality, and drug use -- and the film cuts between sections of each video, not really caring that we might have trouble remembering the names of all characters. What remains clear, however, are the VHS tapes and books surrounding the screen, which include such titles as Suspiria (the Dario Argento original) and Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom and even Zombie, the French title for George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. If these don't give you chills, you might already be dead.
The assembled dance troupe -- for indeed, they are all dancers -- rehearse their choreography in what appears to be an abandoned school building. Immediately afterward, with no interlude, they break into a sort of cast party, complete with house-made sangria. As if they, like sharks, have to move their bodies to survive, they continue to dance with increasing skill, style, and recklessness. Though they are clearly diverse -- brief interspersed scenes depict private conversations between various pairs, often gossiping about the other dancers -- the dance seems to unify them, as they support each other's unique steps and flair in raucous and lengthy dance sequences.
The dance, alcohol, and gossip soon gives way to suspicion and paranoia as the dancers express feeling unusual sensations and dance more and more aggressively. Once someone suggests the sangria was spiked with LSD, the dancers get agitated and violent, accusing and attacking suspects with deadly results. Though the music continues and some players keep dancing, their bodies and minds betray them to baser instincts: peeing, screaming, fighting, fucking, killing, and generally losing touch with whatever makes them human.
It's a dazzling display of artistic power from writer and director Gaspar Noe, who seems intent on ripping apart the critical intersection of human bodies and art. He cares less about characters and more about form, less about story and more about style. The kinetic dance and the frenetic violence that comes after mirror the spectacle of each other, and the camera views it all with fluid grace, plunging headlong into the action. It also seems to reference Dante's Inferno at times, especially when the overhead camera looks down at sordid affairs, or when its long takes wind through darkened hallways in which demonic forms lash arms and legs out from blackened corridors.
The parallels between halves of the film -- divided as they are by the main credits and title text -- continue to mount. The first half is a sort of paradise, a pop-y and popping joy ride of sensual pleasure that makes you want to drink and dance and have sex; the second half is a steady descent into hell in which people are tortured in various ways (bodily, mentally, emotionally) and the act of watching is even torturous for us, the viewers. At one point, a mom locks her son into an electrical closet and his screams are the only musical score for an entire scene before he, offscreen, gets into the wiring, electrocutes himself, and blows the breaker. These people are so messed up, by the end, that they can't deliver on the promises of sex they had made earlier.
A climax with no climax, a school without lessons, dance and violence, art and evil, this movie deserves to be watched on a huge screen with some sick surround sound. Watch it, but don't drink too much. You may not be able to stomach it.
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