The movie Gaspar Noé is “obsessed” with
The movies of Gaspar Noé are extreme, to say very the least. Noé’s work is often comprised of sexually explicit and violent moments that ultimately shock and confound audiences in equal measure. Noé has consistently split cinema audiences throughout his career, with most falling between fascination and vexation.
From Noé’s 1998 debut film, I Stand Alone, to the controversial rape scenes in Irreversible and the downright trip that is Enter the Void, the Argentinian director has established himself as a filmmaker like no other. Simply put, Noé is not an artist to be trifled with.
The director has the same kind of provocative allure that Lars von Trier and John Waters hold, and it all stems from a deep fascination with the history of cinema. Noé is undoubtedly something of a cinephile, and while offering a peek behind the curtain of his creativity, he once stated the movies that he keeps the closest to his heart during a feature with Rotten Tomatoes.
In fact, Noé explained that he has something of an “obsession” with certain films, particularly Jean Eustache’s 1973 film The Mother and The Whore, a project which stars the likes of Pierre Leaud, Bernadette Lafont and Francoise Lebrun. The plot tells of a particular relationship within a love triangle and is widely considered to be Eustache’s best work.
Detailing his admiration further, Noé said of The Mother and The Whore: “It’s a three hours and thirty minutes movie based on his personal life. He tried to do a documentary about his relationship with his girlfriend and his lover and how they tried to have a threesome, and he was noting everything that was going on while it was going on, and he was noting the dialogue, he was taking notes.”
The attempted documentary eventually turned into the feature film version, which Noé calls “the best depiction on screen of dysfunctional passion that I’ve ever seen”. And the reason for the film’s brilliance, in his eyes, is that it all comes from a genuine place.
It’s the very concept of the film that Noé became obsessed with. He explained: “It was great doing a documentary about his life with actors playing his part and his girlfriend and his lover’s part, but also his ex-lovers who were playing the part. The whole concept of the movie is such a puzzle.”
However, The Mother and The Whore is not the only film obsession Noé maintains, as he also reserves the word for two further movies. The first is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, although Noé admits that he does not envy the director as “it was so much work”, and the other is Luis Buñuel’s 1929 short film Un Chien Andalou.
