DARIO ARGENTO AND GASPAR NOÉ HAVE SERVED UP SOME OF THE MOST EXTREME IMAGERY IN CINEMA.
Italy’s Argento is one of the world’s greatest horror directors, having revitalised the genre in the 1970s and ’80s with a blend of vivid violence and amped-up atmospherics. Argentine provocateur Gaspar Noé, meanwhile, has his own proud record of subversive themes and sensoryonslaught visuals.
Argento has given us maggots raining down on ballerinas (Suspiria), a woman forced to witness her boyfriend’s murder by needles taped under her eyelids (Opera), and Jennifer Connelly as an insect-controlling psychic saved by a cut-throat-razor-wielding chimpanzee (Phenomena). Noé’s showreel of shock includes a horrifically violent revenge story told in reverse (Irréversible), a trippy Tokyo odyssey told from the point-of-view of a dead person (Enter The Void), and a dance movie that devolves into hallucinogen-fuelled madness (Climax).
For Noé’s latest, Vortex, the pair have teamed up — although the film is a departure for both. Noé has coaxed the granddaddy of giallo in front of the camera, Argento embarking on an acting career at the ripe old age of 81, while Noé abandons cinematic excess in favour of documentary-like simplicity, the drama tracking the harrowing decline of an elderly Parisian couple. Argento plays a retired film critic; Françoise Lebrun (best known for the 1973 French classic The Mother And The Whore) plays his wife, a former psychiatrist with advanced dementia. Noé allows himself one cinematic flourish: he renders the couple’s lives side by side via split-screen, which conveys both their intimacy and their separation, as they meander on different trajectories around their cluttered apartment.
In its own way, Vortex is as extreme as anything either filmmaker has ever done, in that it deals with the plain, everyday reality of its subject matter, unflinchingly, proving that neither Noé nor Argento have lost their edge. We sat down with them to discuss life, death, notoriety and movies. They did not hold back.
How did you two first meet?
Dario Argento: We met at the Toronto Film Festival. Gaspar had his first film, Carne
[a ferocious 38-minute drama about a vengeful French butcher]. He asked me to see it with him.
I went, we got to know each other, and we became friends.
Gaspar Noé: It was 1991. The person at the festival in charge of the cult, horror and fantasy films introduced us. I found a photo of us having dinner together that first day we met.
Were you a Dario fan, Gaspar?
Noé: Of course! Who wouldn’t want to meet Dario Argento? Any young filmmaker who doesn’t want to meet him needs to change their job. He’s a legend!
Dario, what did you think of Carne? Argento: It had an energy, a strength, something that really affected me. That’s why I suggested producing his next film.
Noé: Carne is only 40 minutes long. I thought I would make a longer version, and Dario said, “If you want me to produce it, call me.” It didn’t happen because I made another film, I Stand Alone, but I found that really touching.
Argento: And then we met again when you were doing Irréversible. I came to the editing room. It was his first big, international film and I told him it was great. And then we met many times after that, and he became a great friend of my daughter, Asia Argento.
Noé: Asia helped me convince you to be in
[Vortex], Dario. When I was writing it, my first thought was, “If only I could have someone as charismatic as Dario.” Because Dario can present a film at the Cinémathèque and he’ll talk on stage for an hour and people will applaud him like he’s a great actor. And he always seems so comfortable in television interviews. I knew it wouldn’t be a problem putting him in a fictional film. I said to Asia, “Do you think your father would possibly agree to act in a film?” She said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “I’m not joking!” I was going to be shooting soon, and I knew his film
[Black Glasses, which Argento recently directed] had been postponed because of Covid. She said, “My father wants to do the film but he has one or two conditions.” I said, “That’s great! I accept whatever conditions he has.”
Argento: The most important condition, and the reason I did the film, was that it would be improvised. You had only written ten pages of