Love, Death and Welbeck – Weekend – Kommersant
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Shown last year at the very end of the Cannes Film Festival, at the so-called midnight screening, Gaspard Noé’s Whirlwind is finally being released in Russia. Noé, who had been denouncing the infantile society of the spectacle from the position of a difficult teenager for decades, suddenly made a very mature, adult movie. It is unlikely that there is something more timely in the cultural agenda now available to the domestic audience.
“Whirlwind” begins with the famous song “Mon amie la rose” by Françoise Hardy. Ardy, whom music critics, having stolen the wording of Serge Gainsbourg, declared in the sixties “the most melancholic voice of the generation”, sings about the transience of earthly existence – using the example of “the scarlet flower”. Its existence is limited to days: “In the morning I was born, and by the evening I grew old, although I was incredibly beautiful.”
There are 24 hours in a day, but our life actually does not last much longer. Was this not what Noé had been talking about for years, now from a Parisian underpass, now from the dance floor, now from the most secluded point in the universe, which, following Gustave Courbet, we poetically call the “origin of the world”? The main conflict in Noe’s work has always unfolded between the cruelty of time and human pride. In “Irreversibility”, which once shocked Cannes with scenes of violence, and several years ago remounted by the author in chronological order, two essentially opposite phrases sound: “Time destroys everything” and “Time exposes everything.” Fate or will, humility or rebellion; in this battle over the abyss, what is called life, on whose side is the truth, is it the power, the creator or the crown of creation?
In The Whirlwind, Noe gives a disappointing answer. The only truth lies in death, and the only strength is in love.
For more than two hours we have been watching a couple of elderly spouses. She (Françoise Lebrun) is a retired psychiatrist, slowly but surely sinking into dementia, stubbornly writing prescriptions every morning that won’t help her. He (Dario Argento) is a film scholar working on a book on the dreamlike nature of cinema; From the very first frames, we understand that a debilitating illness will not allow him to complete the last thing in his life. Their gloomy universe – one and a half-something rooms littered with “remnants of days” – is sometimes invaded by a son (Alex Lutz), who recently seems to have coped with a severe drug addiction. The hearts of the three are still beating, but already behind the clock. Family retreat, alas, is not a safe haven on the eve of the final storm. Before the inevitability of death, everyone is equal, but each on his own. Therefore, Noe divides the screen in half, plunging the characters into the claustrophobic space of their own fears. Lebrun, peering into the off-screen void, often asks: who is following me? And we are not sure who she means – the operator, the husband or the angel of death.
Conceived and realized in the midst of a pandemic, Whirlwind is a difficult spectacle, but probably necessary due to its uncompromising honesty. For we are left alone with the indisputable truth: and one day you will not be able to help yourself or another. “Whirlwind”, of course, calls to mind another apology for entropy – “Love”. However, unlike Michael Haneke, who postulated that, even when breathing out, a person disposes, and God believes, Noe states: in any circumstances, only those who have unlimited patience and unconditional love will be saved. To endure does not mean to meekly wait for a denouement. To endure means to be yourself, no matter how much you have left. And in this respect, The Whirlwind is in tune with Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel, Destroy, partly also inspired by the songs of Françoise Hardy; his main idea is this: the fear of death makes us alive, death is an ideal other, respecting death, you save yourself.
In theaters from 20 October
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