Critic Reviews

Noé’s extraordinary film unfolds as a tale of murmured terrors and nameless dread, creeping softly around a cramped Paris apartment like a cinematic Grim Reaper.

One leaves Vortex feeling cleansed by fire.

Apart from the inspired split-screen gimmick, the film works because the cast is superb, with Argento as the impatient, angry old lion holding on to his threads of power. Lebrun’s performance, though, is the heart of the film.

Vortex tells us something else about old age, something which a severe and high-minded movie like Michael Haneke’s Amour would not grasp: death is chaotic, like life. It ends with things undone and in messy disarray. This is a work of wintry maturity, and real compassion.

The Argentinian director’s follow-up to 2019’s Lux Æterna is a typically difficult watch, subjecting us to the grinding indignities of old age, but it also a deeply moving study of lifelong love and loyalty to the bitter end.

Unnervingly naturalistic performances from two cinematic legends – the great Italian giallo master Dario Argento, the great Italian giallo master and the star of La Maman et La Putain – add to the sense of loss.

Vortex looks unsparingly at characters at the end of life, and finds their experiences as scary as any traditional horror tale.

Among the comforts Vortex refuses is the bittersweet balm of nostalgia. It’s a blunt reckoning with the inevitability of loss, including the loss of memory. We dream for a while, and then we sleep.

There’s an unflinching, near-clinical relentlessness to the picture, but therein lies its compassion and empathy.

It is a remarkable piece of filmmaking, rigorously controlled in ways that he doesn’t always evince: It’s a bone-deep sensory immersion that never feels merely sensationalist, anchored by two performances of astonishing commitment and emotional power.