Gaspar Noé’s new film opens with a split-screen sequence, incorporating an aspect-ratio switch.
Such experimental format tweaking has a long history, so why is it all the rage again?Michael Bay once described his bombastic film-making style as “fucking the frame”, but if any director fornicates with the frame it must surely be Gaspar Noé, who blitzes us with flashing neon, 360-degree camera movements and intercourse closeups.
So it’s a surprise when his new film, Vortex, begins with an elderly married couple (played by Françoise Lebrun and Italian horror maestro Dario Argento) sitting serenely on their Paris balcony.When the soundtrack plays a lovely Françoise Hardy song, you wonder if Noé has mellowed.
But wait! If he doesn’t actually shag the frame here, he fiddles with it in two ways.
First, the square-ish Academy ratio (1.37:1) of the serene prologue expands into a letterbox shape.
Second, that
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