LUX AETERNA (2019) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Gaspar Noé
Charlotte Gainsbourg, Beatrice Dalle, Abbey Lee,
Clara Deshayes, Félix Maritaud, Karl Glusman
This starts out with two actresses (Beatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg, playing themselves) chatting about some of the crazy experiences they've had on film sets over the years. Beatrice does most of the talking - she just rattles on and on - and most of their dialogue feels improvised. Then they're called to the set to shoot a scene with Beatrice behind the camera, as the producer, and Charlotte in front of it, being burned at the stake. The set's in a state of organizational meltdown, a chaotic vision of filmmaking hell, and there are occasional title quotes from Jean-Luc Godard, Carl Theodor Dreyer and Rainer Werner Fassbender, and it ends with an extended strobe sequence that viewers susceptible to seizures SHOULD NOT be looking at. It comes in at around 50 minutes, and under the circumstances, maybe that's enough. What it adds up to is kind of up for grabs, with the strobe effect and end credits that identify everybody who worked on the picture by first name only, but maybe that makes sense, too, somehow. Anyway, once you've set Charlotte Gainsbourg on fire, what can you do for an encore?
