Vortex

Argento plays Lui, the ailing film-critic husband of retired psychiatrist Elle (Françoise Lebrun), whose dementia ebbs and flows across a couple of days. The pair share a Parisian apartment, cluttered with his books and papers, and well stocked with powerful medicines. While he still has ambitions for the future and big plans to write a book, her lucid moments are consumed with guilt and self-recrimination. Maybe, she mutters distractedly, suicide would make life easier for them all. To add a further medical Damoclean sword to the scenario, Lui has a heart condition. 

This tough situation is compounded by the tricky dynamic with their fortysomething son, Stéphane (French comedian Alex Lutz). His well-intentioned attempts to coax a practical solution out of his parents is given further urgency when it’s revealed that he’s a recovering junkie, as well as a single dad to a moppet of a son.

Noé’s material is less brutally in-your-face than usual but the gut-punch impact remains

Noé has built a singular rep for pushing at the boundaries of arthouse cinema, whether via Irreversible’s shuddersome violence or the magnificent Enter the Void’s (very) extreme close-ups. And while the material here is less brutally in-your-face than usual, the gut-punch impact and experimental edge remain. Vortex is presented via a split-screen that follows Lui and Elle – and occasionally Stéphane – independently. Aside from giving your eyes a decision to make in every moment of its lengthy runtime, it works to emphasise the way time moves at a different speed in a mind life ravaged by dementia. It also doubles the misery.