Gaspar Noé


Gaspar Noé is an Argentine filmmaker and screenwriter, who lives and works primarily in France. He is one of the primary exponents of New French Extremity, with his most notable works including the feature films I Stand Alone, Irréversible, Enter the Void, Love, Climax.

Early life and education

Gaspar Noé was born on 27 December 1963 in Buenos Aires, Argentina to Luis Felipe Noé, a prominent Argentine artist, writer, and intellectual of Italian descent, and Nora Murphy, a social worker of Irish descent. He has a sister named Paula. Noé moved to New York City with his parents, and resided on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. Noé returned to Argentina at the age of 5 and emigrated to France in 1976 to escape the military dictatorship occurring in Argentina at the time. Noé obtained Italian citizenship from lineage, and is a dual-citizen of Argentina and Italy, but does not consider himself Italian.
Noé initially wanted to become a cartoonist, but became interested in filmmaking after his father gifted him a 8 film camera|Super 8 camera] that he bought in a Brazilian airport. Noé shot a reel with his best friend Juan Diego Solanas jumping from the Pont Neuf. He graduated from the École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière in Paris. Following his graduation in 1982, he worked as an assistant director on Fernando Solanas's Tangos, the Exile of Gardel and Sur. Noé's first short film Carne was released in 1991.

Artistry

His work has been strongly associated with a collection of films often described as new extreme films. Highlighting their challenging sexual and violent bodily imagery, Tim Palmer has described them as part of a cinéma du corps, and a cinema of 'brutal intimacy' because of its attenuated use of narrative, generally assaulting and often illegible cinematography, confrontational subject material, a treatment of sexual behavior as violent rather than mutually intimate, and a pervasive sense of social nihilism or despair.
Noé often directly addresses the audience in confrontational ways, most notably in I Stand Alone, when an intertitle warns the audience that they have 30 seconds to leave the cinema before the final violent climax. In a different way, this can be seen in Irreversible, in which the 10-minute long single-take rape sequence has frequently been read as an assault on viewers, as well as a depiction of an assault on the female character.

Collaborations

Gaspar Noé and Lucile Hadžihalilović have repeatedly collaborated with each other on film projects since 1987. In the early 1990s, Noé co-founded the production company Les Cinémas de la Zone with Hadžihalilović. Noé operated the camera and was the cinematographer for two short films directed by Hadžihalilović: La Bouche de Jean-Pierre and Good Boys Use Condoms. Similarly, Hadžihalilović produced and edited Carne, edited Seul contre tous and was credited as a writer on Enter the Void. The creative collaboration is made clear in the comparable stylistic choices across these early films, most clearly the credit sequences and the marketing designs. In 2025, Noé will appear in Hadžihalilović's fourth feature film, The Ice Tower.
Three of his films feature the character of a nameless butcher played by Philippe Nahon: Carne, I Stand Alone and, in a cameo, Irréversible.
All of Noé's feature films are shot by cinematographer Benoît Debie.
The music for Irréversible was composed by Thomas Bangalter. The latter also sent Gaspar Noé an unreleased song he made circa 1995 for [Climax (2018 film)|Climax.] The song was named Sangria in reference to the movie.
In collaboration with Saint Laurent (brand)|Saint Laurent], he directed films Lux Æterna and ''Saint Laurent - Summer of ‘21.''

Style and influences

Noé stated in the September 2012 edition of Sight & Sound magazine that seeing 2001: [A Space Odyssey (film)|2001: A Space Odyssey] at the age of seven changed his life, an experience without which he would never have become a director. A poster for the film features notably in a scene towards the end of Irreversible. He also credits his mother for taking him to see other transgressive films as a child, including one by Fassbinder, and cites the skeleton fight scene from Jason and [the Argonauts (1963 film)|Jason and the Argonauts] as a core memory from his youth.
Many of his movies feature all kind of film posters, which reflects his collection and passion for them. He is believed to be the owner of one of the three known copies of the rarest poster for the 1931 film M. Since Irréversible, he's kept working with French film poster designer Laurent Lufroy for all his feature films: Lufroy even appears in [Love (2015 film)|Love], Climax and Lux Æterna.
Additional influences cited by Noé include the French photographer Pierre Molinier, the Japanese director Koji Wakamatsu , Spanish-Mexican filmmaker Luis Buñuel, David Lynch's Eraserhead, Le Professeur Choron, and Argentinian painter Jorge De La Vega.
Many specific scenes and filmmaking decision from Noé's work were inspired by films. The warning in I Stand Alone was influenced by the film Homicidal. Irreversible was inspired by the film Betrayal, for its reverse chronology, as well as the films In the Realm of the Senses, I Am Cuba, A Clockwork Orange, Straw Dogs, Deliverance, and Death Wish. The POV camera in Enter the Void was inspired by Lady in the Lake. Additionally, the use of 3D in Love was inspired by Gravity.
Noé also cites the 1983 Austrian serial killer film, Angst, by Gerald Kargl and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver as additional influences. He has said De Niro's performance in Raging Bull was his "favorite male performance ever."
One of Noé's favorite books is An Experiment with Time by J. W. Dunne.

Personal life

When questioned about his sexuality he has described himself as "testosterophobic," saying "the male testosterone can be very boring and annoying and repetitive. So mostly in my movies, the girls have the cool parts and the men have the stupid parts." When asked about abortion, a theme in several of his films, he said, "I'm not pro-life, I'm not pro-choice, I'm not pro-death, I'm not anti-choice. In my personal life, I thought it was much easier to be careful."

Health and drug use

Throughout his career, Noé has spoken frequently about his experiences with drugs, and his use of substances like ecstasy, datura, LSD, marijuana, DMT, ayahuasca, morphine, amphetamine, poppers and cocaine. In early 2020, Noé suffered a near fatal brain hemorrhage and was advised by his physician not to use hard drugs.

Filmography

Short films

  • Tintarella di luna
  • Pulpe amère
  • Carne
  • Une expérience d'hypnose télévisuelle
  • Sodomites
  • Intoxication
  • Run Rabbit Run!
  • Eva
  • We Fuck Alone segment of Destricted
  • SIDA segment of 8
  • Ritual segment of 7 Days in Havana
  • Shoot segment of Short Plays
  • The Art of Filmmaking
  • ''Saint Laurent - Summer of '21''

Music videos

Photography

Besides being a filmmaker, he is an occasional photographer. In 2013, Noé shot the cover art for American singer-songwriter Sky Ferreira's debut album Night Time, My Time. Other celebrities, such as Agnès b., Todd Solondz or Stacy Martin were shot by Gaspar Noé, as well as several models for erotic magazines.

Reception

Many of Noé's films were polarizing or controversial with viewers due to their inclusion of graphic scenes of violence and sexual violence. I Stand Alone, Irreversible, Enter the Void, We Fuck Alone, ''Love and Climax'' were all considered controversial for their challenging sexual and violent imagery.

''Irreversible''

Irreversible was hugely divisive amongst critics with journals such as Sight and Sound and Positif allowing critics to openly voice their disagreements about the film. It caused substantial outrage in many countries for its central scene of rape, filmed in a single take and lasting nearly ten minutes in total, with some critics comparing it to pornography because of its length and the use of a static camera, as well as considering the film as a whole to be deeply homophobic for its hellish portrayal of a gay S&M club. On the other hand, it was also frequently praised for its brutal portrayal of the horrors of rape, and its implicit challenge to viewers of the scene. Eugenie Brinkema, for instance, describes Irreversible as "ethically, generically, subjectively" disruptive: "the rape is real, it is private, it is contained – it is insufferably present. it interrogates vehicles of receptivity and the power and violence done to bodies by bodies".