Vortex

Vortex is a 2021 avant-garde psychological drama film written and directed by Gaspar Noé. It stars Dario Argento as a father and author, his first leading role, alongside Françoise Lebrun as his wife, and Alex Lutz as his son, Stéphane. The film deals with the themes of human condition and personal problems, use of slow, minimal cinematic approach and almost defiantly restrained: a pockmarked, faded palette of the frame, deaf voices, and the use of low-frequency background sound. The film premiered in the Cannes Premiere section at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, to received acclaim from film critics, with praise for Noé's direction, Argento and Lebrun's performances, emotional power, scope, ambition and execution. This led Noe's career from extremity to slow cinema genre with use of realistic character drama. Plot The film tells the story of an old married couple lived in an apartment - a distinguished author and a retired psychiatrist. The couple, due to age and diseases, primarily his heart condition and her dementia, begins to move away from each other and gradually loses contact with reality as the film screen splits into two separately between them. The husband, not allowing information about his wife's condition, tries to focus on finishing another book about cinema and dreams despite his condition. The couple's son and grandson, Stéphane and Kiki, who lives separately, hardly adjusts his own life and does not always find time to help his parents but to begged them to stay in the apartment for her, but the husband did not want to sell their apartment for Stéphane due to their problems. Claire, his former lover, reconciles him for the first time and deals with them from their diseases.