Lux Æterna

[DarkImbecile]

Gaspar Noé, the arch provocateur of New French Extremity responsible for Irreversible and Enter the Void, blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction in Lux Æterna, his ode to the suffering and sacrifices involved in the creation of art.

French cinema icons Charlotte Gainsbourg (Ismael’s Ghosts, Antichrist) and Béatrice Dalle (Betty Blue, Inside), playing themselves, star as the lead actress and the director of an experimental film about witches. But as preparations for the shoot get underway, the increasingly chaotic production slowly unravels as egos and bitter resentments rise to the surface, threatening to derail the entire enterprise.

Shot over just five days and largely improvised by the superlative cast, Lux Æterna is a powerful, hypnotic assault on the senses like no other, cementing Noé’s position as one of the most incendiary voices in cinema today.

Features

• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
• Original lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and PCM 2.0 stereo soundtracks
• Optional English subtitles (French dialogue)
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing (all dialogue)
• Brand new audio commentary by author and critic Kat Ellinger
• Brand new visual essay on witchcraft in cinema by author and critic Miranda Corcoran
• "The Flicker", a 30-minute short film by Tony Conrad, whose strobing effect inspired Lux Æterna
• Lux in Tenebris, a selection of photos from the set by camera operator, title designer and long-term Noé collaborator Tom Kan
• Theatrical trailers
• Image gallery
• Reversible sleeve featuring two choices of artwork
  FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Neil Mitchell

[domino harvey]

Are they charging full price for this? It's like 50 minutes long

[swo17]

Woah, I just noticed this features The Flicker on Blu-ray!

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Are they charging full price for this? It's like 50 minutes long

It’s a hair cheaper that Enter the Void, so it seems to be cheaper.

I’m also surprised about the addition of the Tony Conrad short, but I do have a few thoughts on it. Not sure if HD will really improve the quality of it really just because of the nature of it. Additionally, I always felt part of the intentional design of the film has to do with how the shutter functions on a 16mm projector. The first time I did see this was a digital file probably on Ubuweb, so I’m also maybe just talking out of my ass on this and that the release here represents the film perfect!

[therewillbeblus]

Woah, I just noticed this features The Flicker on Blu-ray!

Wow! Release of the year (and I didn't like the Noe film at all, nor do I remember a single thing about it despite Letterboxd telling me I watched it a year ago)

[yoshimori]

I could watch Ms Gainsbourg and Ms Dalle sit and chat all afternoon, no problem. And Dalle's 'directing' the crazy movie she was making was, for me, a hoot-and-a-half. Anyone interested in Noé or the actresses shouldn't hesitate to seek it out, I'd think.

[colinr0380]

I'm looking forward to finally getting the chance to see this, and beyond the main names there are some other notable cast members such as Abbey Lee (who played one of the supermodels in The Neon Demon and was recently in M. Night Shyamalan's Old), Félix Maritaud (from 120 bpm, Knife+Heart and Sauvage) and Karl Glusman (the lead in Noé's previous feature Love and who also appeared in The Neon Demon)

[tenia]

Noé is mostly hit-or-miss with me, and like TWBB, I quite disliked this one which felt very quickly quite boring (a shame for a 50 minutes movie) and excessively theatrical in the pejorative way. A small portion interested me, felt like it had a good dynamic going on, but it all fell apart too fast, ending up with nothing much to offer behind its technical aspect. I loved experimenting the flicker in a theater though, which felt like a willing way to push the viewer past its physical capacities, which it did for many spectators at the screening I attended : I had myself to close my eyes after some time because it was just too strong for them, but others simply got up and left - it was clear it was the end of the movie anyway and they wouldn't miss anything anyway. But as I said to Noé last year (and that made him chuckle) : I don't like everything he does, but just for the technical experiment, he is one of the rare directors I'll always try and make sure to watch his movies in a theater and not just at home.

Dalle directing the movie was the most interesting section to me, with the power-dynamic between her and her team probably what felt like the thing going the most-forward, but past this, it all felt like running on fumes.

I’m also surprised about the addition of the Tony Conrad short, but I do have a few thoughts on it. Not sure if HD will really improve the quality of it really just because of the nature of it.

It's interesting Arrow are also adding The Flicker, because Potemkine did it too in France. I thus wonder if Noé suggested it himself, or if Arrow are simply replicating the French content "because the short is available so why not ?".

[therewillbeblus]

I’m also surprised about the addition of the Tony Conrad short, but I do have a few thoughts on it. Not sure if HD will really improve the quality of it really just because of the nature of it. Additionally, I always felt part of the intentional design of the film has to do with how the shutter functions on a 16mm projector. The first time I did see this was a digital file probably on Ubuweb, so I’m also maybe just talking out of my ass on this and that the release here represents the film perfect!

For what it’s worth, I’ve only ever seen the film on my TV off a digital file, and both times I came away feeling like my life had been changed- though I imagine if I saw it projected in a theatre it would likely only improve an already perfect experience! Watching it in an entirely pitch dark and noiseless environment sans a single possible distraction is key though

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

This just got announced for American distribution in theaters this Spring along with a future home video release by Yellow Veil, one of the newer Vinegar Syndrome partner labels

[colinr0380]

Inspired to check on what Gaspar Noé has been up to after receiving my copy of Lux Aeterna, I belatedly found out about this commercial(?) for the fashion house Saint Laurent - Summer of '21, which features a lot of the director's current aesthetics such as the split screen approach that occurs in Lux Aeterna and appears to go on to the most recent Vortex (as well as the shot-countershot in separate screens; and the 180° following from behind to in front looking backwards reverse shot intercutting aspect). Plus Charlotte Rampling, seemingly playing a person annoyed at the way all the long legged antsy supermodels (who appear to have a lot of trouble in finding a place to sit and just settle down for more than a moment) downstairs are ignoring her banging on the floor to get them to turn their pounding Donna Summer disco loop down, so has to go and teach the young 'uns a lesson in sitting down, staying put, paying attention and worshipping an on stage goddess!

Or it could be a Suspiria-style fairy tale story about a young lady being chased through the woods finding a curious kind of solace inside a mansion inhabited by a coven of ladies and their High Priestess, who maybe were the ones to have drawn her to them?

(Or it could be a gorgeous way of abstracting a catwalk style parade of fashion models with instead of a runway an appropriately socially distanced parade through the luxuriously appointed rooms of a mansion into a limited audience capacity theatre. I still despair at those apparently ADHD-afflicted models ever getting back to finishing their seemingly abandoned mid-way through chess game though!)

[therewillbeblus]

Got my copy today, revisited The Flicker for the third time, and I'm pleased to report that it looks fantastic. The only thing is.. it's wildly different from the digital copy I've seen, which must have been cleaned up and had scratches removed, because this print is chock full of marks. Although my previous two watches definitely varied and remained singular from each other (this is the kind of film that will give the viewer a new experience each viewing through its intrinsic nature), this copy's presence of dirt, speckles, blotches, etc. led to an entirely different and fuller experience. Typically this film serves as visual meditation where I'm taking in information and engaging with the film around patterns spread from the focal point in the center- but because the specks come from all spaces of the print, as it sped up I found my visual processing to be less predictable, the stimuli appropriately chaotic, and the effects all-encompassing, taking unique shape utilizing the whole frame within the AR. I'm not sure if the print I had been watching was independently cleaned up online or if it resembles the Re:Voir disc, but this version felt more authentic in how the film is probably supposed to look, as it emulates the activity of celluloid being projected. Anyways, the addition of these marks will likely only make the film more rewarding over time. The sound and visual quality were terrific- better than the previous version I'd seen, though it's hard for me to tell how HD this is given its constitutional lack of signifiers.

[yoloswegmaster]

New extra added to this release:

Brand new audio commentary by writer/director Gaspar Noé and actress Béatrice Dalle

[swo17]

I'm glad Noé explains in an intro on the Yellow Veil release that this 50-minute film was made as a joke, with no idea what they would be doing when they showed up for a 5-day shoot and wasted the first day (and then he had to plead with Gainsbourg to stay an extra half hour on the last day to reshoot her most substantive scene of dialogue) because you might otherwise assume with all the Dreyer quotes being thrown around that these people thought they were making a good movie! Speaking of quotes, the YV release also makes the bold choice of emblazoning that famous one from Buñuel "Thank God I'm an atheist" on the back of its slipcover, which is funny because I've found the times in life I yearn most fervently for the existence of a higher being are while watching Gaspar Noé films. That being said, I guess I'll keep buying these lavish editions so long as they continue to feature other films that I actually do want to watch.

Also, the end credits sequence to Lux Æterna is very cool. I think I also really enjoyed the opening credits to Climax. So there's that