Vortex

Vortex was born from profoundly personal experiences. Gaspar Noé endured a life-threatening brain hemorrhage in early 2020, and during his recovery—which coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic—he immersed himself in Japanese melodramas by filmmakers like Mizoguchi, Naruse, and Kinoshita, being moved by their emotional depth. This introspection and exposure to classical cinema inspired him to create, in his own words, a melodrama: “that’s the kind of movie I would like to do after doing kind of ‘cult movies’ for decades.”

Noé chose a split-screen format, filming the elderly couple with two cameras—a method he had practiced in Lux Æterna. In Vortex, the split screen becomes a poignant metaphor for parallel isolation, eroded connection, and internal fragmentation. The Paris apartment where the story unfolds is cluttered, claustrophobic, and filled with traces of memory, visually echoing the couple’s disintegration. Much of the dialogue is improvised, making the experience feel raw and immediate.

The storyline follows an elderly couple—an unnamed film critic and his wife, a retired psychiatrist—living together in their Paris apartment. The husband is preoccupied with writing a book about cinema and dreams, while his wife increasingly struggles with the grip of dementia. Their adult son, who is battling his own problems, attempts to help but finds himself powerless as his parents’ decline accelerates. Through the split-screen device, their lives unfold simultaneously yet separately, emphasizing their shared space but growing distance. What begins as a tender portrait gradually becomes a harrowing study of aging, memory loss, and the inevitability of death.

Premiered at Cannes in 2021, Vortex earned widespread acclaim for its emotional resonance, restrained yet searing approach, and the transformation of Noé’s style from provocation to understated cinéma vérité. It emerges as arguably his most personal and quietly devastating film—a contemplative, slow-burning elegy on dementia, aging, love, and mortality. Driven by his own near-death and grieving experiences, the film abandons shock tactics for emotional precision. Through split screens and improvisation, Vortex unfolds as a brutal, inescapable testament to the human condition.

Benoît Debié has been Gaspar Noé’s trusted visual collaborator for over twenty years, and Vortex stands out as one of their most accomplished partnerships. The film’s defining stylistic choice is its split-screen format, used from beginning to end. Noé initially tested both single- and dual-camera methods, but by the end of the first day of shooting, it was clear that the split-screen approach carried greater emotional weight. From that point forward, Debié and Noé each operated one of the two cameras.

Their physical differences—Debié being taller and filming Dario Argento, while Noé, shorter, followed Françoise Lebrun—could easily have produced uneven compositions. To resolve this, they intentionally overexposed the frame edges, then corrected, aligned, and stabilized the images in post-production, creating a fluid and balanced visual rhythm across both halves of the screen.

The film was shot with twin ARRI Alexa Mini LF cameras paired with 15 mm Laowa Zero-D Cine lenses, relying exclusively on natural and practical lighting. This approach preserved a raw intimacy while keeping exposure and color remarkably consistent.

Debié’s precise yet unobtrusive cinematography became a cornerstone of the film’s impact and earned him a nomination for the prestigious Lumière Award for Best Cinematography. Critics widely praised the split-screen execution, noting how rigorously crafted visuals amplified the film’s devastating emotional force.